by Kate Birch | Apr 19, 2021 | News, Picks of the Month
It was so so close and rather like a race in which first one contender and then the other edges out into the lead. But in the end it was Sally Festing’s ‘Sunday Mornings’ which triumphed, its gentleness, familiarity and economy of words with the sense of time, of ‘a...
by Helen Ivory | Apr 19, 2021 | Featured, Poetry
Shadowtime Romney Marsh, Kent, February, 1287 That night a slice of moon rose, mottled red like a scratched wound. The sea was torched, wind-charged. We heard the tide roar twice across the Marsh and knew it was here, the hour of the dead. Hulls...
by Helen Ivory | Apr 18, 2021 | Featured, Poetry
from: Seize i. I fear my poor old soul may be a fixer upper. I strive to find out – it’s that forensic streak I have, I suppose – by too often drinking on an empty stomach. There’s a view afoot, I think, that a proper soul needs proper seasoning....
by Helen Ivory | Apr 17, 2021 | Featured, Poetry
Home Front For days after the children leave for their homes in the South we discover unexcavated battlefields, nonsensical as Towton. Small formations of infantrymen guard the lower book-case shelves, lone snipers lurk behind the curtains, and...
by Helen Ivory | Apr 16, 2021 | Featured, Poetry
Roses The postman was my friend, rang the bell, wouldn’t leave until he’d reached me, handed me broken stems of roses — thorny with their heads at crooked angles, buds that tried but only turned to rusty paper. They’d found you by the postbox...