The Laundrette - Liz Lochhead

Read along with Suzi. Use the glossary below to help you to understand the poem.

LAUNDRETTE

We sit nebulous in steam
It calms the air and makes the windows stream
rippling the hinterland's big houses to a blur
of bedsits - not a patch on what they were before.

We stuff the tub, jam money in the slot
sit back on rickle chairs not
reading. The paperbacks in our pockets curl.
Our eyes are riveted. Our own colours whirl.

We pour in smithereens of soap. The machine sobs
through its cycle. The rhythm throbs
and changes. Suds droll and slobber in the churn,
Our duds don't know which way to turn.

The dark shoves one man in,
lugging a bundle like a wandering Jew. Linen
washed in public here.

We let out of the bag who we are.

This young wife has a fine stack of sheets, each pair
a present. She admires their clean cut air
of colour schemes and

being chosen. Are the dyes fast?
This christening lather will be the first test.

This woman is deadpan before the rinse and sluice
of the family in a bagwash. Let them stew in their juice
to a final fankle, twisted, wrung out into rope,
hard to unravel. She sees a kaleidoscope

For her to narrow her eyes and blow smoke at, his overalls
and pants ballooning, tangling with her smalls
and the teeshirts skinned from her wriggling son.
She has a weather eye for might shrink or run.

This dour man does for

himself. Before him,
half lost, his small possessions swim.
Cast off, random
they nose and nudge the porthole glass like flotsam.

Glossary of Words

• hinterland- an area behind the main area of the city
• bedsit- a one room flat containing bedroom and living room
• rickle- a loosely piled heap or unsteady structure (Scottish dialect)
• smithereens - the tiny pieces of something, especially when it's been smashed into small bits.
• duds- a colloquialism ( a saying that expresses something other than the literal meaning of the words it contains is a colloquialism, like saying "I wasn't born yesterday," to mean "you can't fool me." ) for clothes, personified, are disoriented and "don't know which way to turn," which is a pun on the agitating action of the washing machines.
• fankle- entangled (Scottish dialect)
• kaleidoscope - a child's toy, a tube with a series of mirrors at one end that reflect multiple images of coloured bits of glass or toys that move, creating constantly-changing images as you turn the tube. (clothes in a washing machine are likened to this)
• flotsam - is the floating wreckage of a ship. You'll often hear it used with jetsam (flotsam and jetsam) which are floating objects that have been thrown from a ship, usually to lighten it before it sinks.

Now watch this video on the meaning of the poem and complete the quiz.

Now listen to Suzi describe the style of the poem.