by Helen Ivory | Jan 16, 2023 | Featured, Poetry
Cassandra Atherton is a widely anthologised and award-winning prose poet and scholar of prose poetry. She was a Harvard Visiting Scholar in English and a Visiting Fellow at Sophia University, and is Professor of Writing and Literature at Deakin...
by Helen Ivory | Jan 15, 2023 | Featured, Poetry
Slow Burn My mother’s life was fire, a smoulder inching along the spliced fuse of her life. Among her first words were coke and coal delivered by the black-smeared coalman who emptied sacks on his shoulders into the cellar. The chunks glistened in...
by Helen Ivory | Jan 14, 2023 | Featured, Poetry
A.M. P.M. Step out into the day’s whiteness And breathe the bad air. The early chill reminds you you’re here. The sky is birdless, And planes chew through the sinewy clouds. The taste of coffee is dark In your mouth. The hot black shock Tore open the...
by Helen Ivory | Jan 13, 2023 | Featured, Poetry
Morning, Mister Magpie Think of all the chain letters you had to write, the time you were almost knocked down crossing to avoid a window cleaner’s ladder, the look on your face when I put that brolly up indoors. For you, 13 isn’t an ordinary...
by Helen Ivory | Jan 12, 2023 | Featured, Poetry
Birdsong in the playground I asked a sea-gull on a see-saw what’s it all for, what’s it all about? He said nowt and flew away. I asked a crow on a swing the self-same thing, but he refused to say anything, he just hopped off to the roundabout,...
by Helen Ivory | Jan 11, 2023 | Featured, Poetry
She believes herself to be a field creature Nessie is losing her mind boiling cotton with bleach all year long. She stalks lands and fields at twilight, fashions a dress from a beetle’s shell. The women in the dormitories don’t sleep a jot for...
