by Helen Ivory | Dec 24, 2025 | Featured, Twelve Days of Christmas
Madonna del Parto A fresco by Piero della Francesca, c.1460 Piero painted her in a week, after his mother died, her azure gown split open like a ripe plum, her posh girl fingers resting on the mystery, all swollen belly and haloed radiance. She...
by Helen Ivory | Dec 23, 2025 | Featured, Twelve Days of Christmas
Interference This tree, unlike others we have used, is shorter than we are and grows in a glazed ceramic pot. What we might choose to call branches, in truth are no more than twigs. Still, we festoon them with coloured lights and glittery...
by Helen Ivory | Dec 22, 2025 | Featured, Twelve Days of Christmas
Mother of Pearl It was when your hair fell like snow I found it again. No longer moon blonde, time had coppered the hair auburn. The garage is where your roots grow. I found the plait of hair in a small blue suitcase with silvered clasps, two feet...
by Helen Ivory | Dec 21, 2025 | Featured, Poetry, Twelve Days of Christmas
Ten weeks to Christmas Store leaf fire in your eyes against the dark. Steep the brightness of berries in syrup and wine. Trade green for gold, steadily, like the silver birch. Look across the valley to the other side where March waves to you....
by Helen Ivory | Dec 12, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
Night Out a flower is not a heron does not stand on one leg spear-billed over golden carp does not rise on wide wings neck curving into the blue flight like a slow heartbeat a heartbeat is not a flight does not lift a wary body translate a girl...
