by Helen Ivory | Nov 8, 2020 | Featured, Poetry
Malt I was a sickly child and for my health Ma fed me Malt from a big brown jar. Glass, big bellied with a silvery lid that we used afterwards to hold a candle to light the cellar. Malt was thick. More gloopy than syrup or treacle and folded back...
by Helen Ivory | Nov 7, 2020 | Featured, Poetry
Mamgu In the coal-dark kitchen of Mamgu’s house above the fireplace scratched with coal-dust, brief sunlight reflects in the miner’s lamp. Every morning Mamgu would polish it with Brasso and a red cotton cloth. Her thin hands handled...
by Helen Ivory | Nov 6, 2020 | Featured, Poetry
Deco In the elevator with your mother The first floor an apparition Your awareness expands with a pang in your diaphragm. She clothes you in the stall The lipsticked attendants buzz and hiss Spit purple refractions Of waists sliced in halves many...
by Helen Ivory | Nov 5, 2020 | Featured, Poetry
Farmer’s Piano Shop Plate Glass Window, Luton, 20th July 1919 I will tell you that after the jet of water lifted me and before it threw me through the plate glass window, I had time to notice a number of things, namely: that the window looked...
by Kate Birch | Nov 4, 2020 | Featured, News
A touch of menace lurks among the lines of our shortlisted poems for October’s Pick of the Month. It may be just outside the door that you cannot seem to get out of in ‘Dressed’ from Lucy Ashe or what is revealed in Niamh Haran’s...
by Helen Ivory | Nov 4, 2020 | Featured, Poetry
In the first days of lockdown At the edge of the tilled field two hares draw an arc towards the riverbank where long luxurious tongues of wild garlic are coated with thick frost. I can’t smell or taste a thing. I pledge myself to this field to the...
