by Helen Ivory | Apr 29, 2020 | Featured, Poetry
Faceless extinctions A moth arrives like a small hand passing over my face and when I open my eyes a heartbeat thuds against my bedside shade. Leave your window ajar and your lamp lit – why, that’s an invitation, says he. White ermine, little...
by Helen Ivory | Apr 28, 2020 | Featured, Poetry, Prose
Under Fire The job I needed. The job that contempted me. The job on a Loyalist housing estate in a blank end-terrace house, a crime scene smeared clean. The house impossible to hearten or heat. The job that started each day with lighting a fire...
by Helen Ivory | Apr 27, 2020 | Featured, Poetry
Waiting I am in the room, waiting to be called, with several ahead of me in the queue. Vincent’s iris on the wall droops from a vase of others, not much perkier. With each buzz and change of light from red to green, someone gets up, approaches the...
by Helen Ivory | Apr 26, 2020 | Featured, Poetry
Placenta Laid flat on the floorboards it’s an autumn tree crown with boughs rising skyward from a severed trunk. It’s a glistening viscus grown by mother and daughter, brought home in a carrier bag, preserved in the freezer, planted out in spring,...
by Helen Ivory | Apr 25, 2020 | Featured, Haibun, Tanka, Haiku & Haiga, Poetry
* the tattered scarecrow: a raven perches on its shoulder * fireflies . . . sparks from a hammer on the anvil * spring dust sparrows squabble in the forenoon * a dry leaf on the ground . . . a death’s head moth * a silent gong inside the pagoda . . ....
by Helen Ivory | Apr 24, 2020 | Featured, Poetry, Reviews
This book has an unusual premise in that it’s about something you wouldn’t want to read about. It’s about one of the most difficult subjects – child loss – and yet Hopkins’ writing allows the subject the sensitivity and accessibility that it needs. The...
