Poetry

This is why I value that little phrase “I don’t know” so highly. It’s small, but it flies on mighty wings. It expands our lives to include the spaces within us as well as those outer expanses in which our tiny Earth hangs suspended.  

Wislawa Symborska

My poetry has been published in a number of magazines and anthologies, such as: Verve Poetry Festival's Anthology of Protest, Litter Magazine, Otherwise engaged, Ink Sweat and Tears, the Nine Arches Press Blog, the Cut the Clouds anthology, and Mother's Milk Books website.

I was longlisted for the National Poetry Competition 2021, Longlisted for the Primer's Competition 2020, highly commended in the Verve Poetry Festival Competition, and shortlisted for Primers in 2023.  I won the Stonewood regional writer's prize in 2017, and was commended in the Mother's Milk Books prize in 2018.

I also gained a place on the Writing East Midlands Menoritring Scheme and worked with Helen Mort to produce a poetry collection in 2020 to 2021.

I completed my MA in Ceeative writing at Nottingham Trent University in 2020, with distiction. I am currently studying for a PhD in gender, trauma and contemporary poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.


Full body reclaim


Oh! Lily sweetness, with a split petal curled for joy,

within your roofless room furred bees can stroke

and be stroked by you inside a rebel angel cloak.

Within your hushed, folded bloom thunder’s noise

approaches, the fierce rumble of sky and rich soil

thrilling spine and skull and bringing rain that soaks

away skin but without pain so it slides from bones.

As if a creature, maybe a rabbit, could shed spoilt

skin, but when it was cast off, rather than leaving

a wounded thing, instead a luminous rabbit soul

would rise, essence of grass and fields and swift

rabbit, restored and returned to pure breathing.

And then slowly shrugging back into skin, whole

now and shouldering physicality like a heavy gift.

Rose

 

You worry about dropping things so much has been spilled already

but I am careless balanced 

on a stem my petals blowsy overblown

I lose a few and lose a few     

my filmy pieces of bliss discarded

a silk wrap for your fingertip a piece of dreaming sky

 

you want to know what kind of enigma I am—

I only know that I am one that is translucent

and     one that is yellow and

one that is red

I have dewy edges  still wet when in shadow

even after hours  in the time of sunlight

 

and hinges where petals fold down

from the white of my fleshy centre

 

you ask what can that flesh be made of—

the tiny bones of ears all crushed and softened 

the heart of hearing

or a flood of miniscule shells patterns erased by the sea

the still centres of constant motion

       

And how can petals emerge from this—

I let my colour  bloom like blood

 

You ask more questions—

how does each petal know where it lives?

How does every part of you know where it lives?

I answer—

 

all the creatures of the Earth

know where they live remember

here is your hair and here is each limb

sometimes outside of every miracle

and sometimes held within


 

Bluebell

 

Our smooth blue throats

hang down hungry for the earth

in its woody decomposition     we breathe it in

and breathe it in that rich rotting history

 

and some of us are uplifted to drink the air 

in its million currents

 

when we gulp together  we swallow you down

into coolest spring like when you wait at the top of the tunnel slide

in the water park then swing yourself down

into the channel of water     whoosh and dimmed light

and then all your breath is taken as you submerge

there is nothing else there is nothing else

only spring

 

Our blue can soothe

even the parts of you that can’t be soothed

the tangled conflict the unbearable loss

like an efficient nurse with ice cubes     flannel and drugs

who slides you down the dark flume of night

 

Our frilled edges like the careful curls

at the edge of your grandmother’s face   

our buds bunched arguments ready to burst

the white lumps of our planted hearts

shoving forth fountains of green and moon

in slow motion insupportable cascades


 

Daffodil

 

Hell yeah! My mouth is open

to eat all the eddies in the air I am hungry

and loud

 

Yellow! Yellow!     I shout

along with the cacophony of life like when you do the breaststroke

in the sea and sink into each scooping dip

    

a world of water hits your chest

 

when the next wave rises it covers your head

and your face is all salt all salt everywhere. 

Do you think it’s easy being this gorgeous?

 

Being stretched to the endless limits of yellow

paper thin and barely here I am almost all water

and yet look how generous I am

with all I haven’t got

 

Do you remember when you gave birth

and you felt blown open wide enough to let the world in?

I live like that  wide as an estuary

at high tide

 

Look at me look at me

I am a herald for the Earth’s orbit

and for Yes

 

one impossible moment in an ordinary grass verge