by Helen Ivory | Aug 30, 2016 | 2016 poetry picks, Prose & Poetry
My Mother Visits the Dissection Room She said she wanted to go there. So I pulled some strings, read her the rules. “Sensible shoes?” she said. “Yes Mother. Plus clothes you don’t mind ruined. Fixers, they don’t wash out. The smell will get you,...
by Helen Ivory | Aug 17, 2016 | 2016 poetry picks, Prose & Poetry
Foxgloves 1. There’s not much you can say about hollyhocks. 2. Or are they foxgloves? 3. They’re tall, for instance. 4. Skyscrapers of the garden. 5. And they always appear in June. 6. Like big, extravagant yardsticks for the...
by Helen Ivory | Aug 16, 2016 | 2016 poetry picks, Prose & Poetry
Somewhere on the moon I have been trying to decipher your thin smile, a shaky bridge between your ears. Those eyes, slits- blocking away the truth, with a look of longing, search for stars beyond your skin. The way you chaliced your palms when it rained,...
by Helen Ivory | Aug 15, 2016 | 2016 poetry picks, Prose & Poetry
Some Data and a Little Insight There’s no one here whose heart is still to break – Roddy Lumsden after Po Chü-i No-one’s heart in that room is waiting to be broken for the first time and no-one is standing here, among the quiet men, whose...
by Kate Birch | Aug 10, 2016 | 2016 poetry picks, Blogs & News
It was a particularly powerful and emotional shortlist this month out of which Theophilus Kwek’s transcendent ‘Psalm 19′ emerged as the overall winner. Theo is the author of three collections, They Speak Only Our Mother Tongue (2011), Circle Line...
by Helen Ivory | Aug 7, 2016 | 2016 poetry picks, Prose & Poetry
Lit up They lift sweetie-sharp glow-stars on tips of licked fingers, glue them, neon scabs, to the inside of her skull – she is lit. Colour-studded, so damned pretty – a reverse Easter egg for the cracking. The grit-stars shoot all night: there is...
