by Kate Birch | Jun 14, 2018 | 2018 poetry picks, Blogs & News, Prose & Poetry
IF Grenfell Tower a Year On If trying to keep your head, you raced towards the pillar of flame and smoke choking the building, not knowing if your children, partner, mother, brother, friend were trapped inside it; if you lost one or many...
by Helen Ivory | Jun 7, 2018 | 2018 poetry picks, Prose & Poetry
Rhubarb ear-deep amid the petioles engorged and pink listening to the rain striking a timpani of leaf-blades my eardrums itch after that slither adder crowning the rhubarb its hissing wire-brushes my cochlea crimson stalks A...
by Helen Ivory | May 31, 2018 | 2018 poetry picks, Prose & Poetry
Blake Draws The Ghost of a Flea Blake says the flea complains of a haunting. He says he will draw the ghost within the flea. From the darkness of the mahogany board, Blake exhumes a body. Not a pinprick creature that could be crushed under the...
by Helen Ivory | May 28, 2018 | 2018 poetry picks, Prose & Poetry
Auto-da-fé (London 1955) In the mirror of fitting room at Harvey Nichols. I am wearing a black sanbenito by Tomás de Torquemada, decorated with devils from my past. Outside the London streets are foggy, in Lewes they will already be stacking wood...
by Helen Ivory | May 27, 2018 | 2018 poetry picks, Prose & Poetry
Last Kiss She landed, her first hours totally floored. Away from the nest far away as a star. Her wings are a lattice of straw with lachrymal dope binding the pale rose-raw reed of her skin; her eyes are a blessing of fear thrumming the lids as...
by Helen Ivory | May 23, 2018 | 2018 poetry picks, Prose & Poetry
Completely safe in Colwyn Bay We know a man, you see – well, we don’t know him, but we’re certain he was nowhere in the vicinity on that January night when the Victorian pier finally came undone, collapsed, gave up its ghosts. We do not speculate – aloud...
