Jo Field's career includes starting and running a Montessori school, teaching adults with learning difficulties, managing a joke shop, and persuading people to take part in government surveys.
She is one of five original members of WordAid, a Kent-based collective which publishes occasional poetry anthologies to benefit various charities.
She is also proud to claim an extremely tenuous family connection with the first Marquess of Anglesey, and hence a special interest in the fate of his leg. This witty sequence of poems tells its story, and at the same time commemorates the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, at which the leg was lost. Though not entirely.
Second Opinion
Vivian, he says in the night,
take a look at that leg
and tell me what you think of it.
Some time hence, perhaps,
I may be inclined to imagine it might
have been saved,
and I should like your opinion upon it.
Sir Hussey’s examination of the thing
is brief, but thorough enough.
He is able to confirm
that it is better
off.