by Helen Ivory | Jan 8, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
Baldwin St, mid-November Wet tarmac blinks red and gold, names shine outside the Gaumont. Stop dreaming, you’ll get lost. I trot to keep up, past the chip shop, past a big man bellowing Mind out! as he shifts a stack of crates, past Carwardine’s...
by Helen Ivory | Jan 7, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
Driving lesson Before the first turn of the key, before adjusting the mirror, before releasing the handbrake even, Dad said: there are two things you need to know. The first, he said, is double-declutching. It’s got me out of many a scrape. It...
by Helen Ivory | Jan 6, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
If you didn’t know what a storm is This thing will enter your perception with a swagger. Kick open doors, slam wood to wall, shake rooms, with the impatient knock of nature. Alive, but not exactly, as it fills the frame, flicker-lit by lightning....
by Helen Ivory | Jan 5, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
This morning the room is bright with snowlight and everything seems illuminated differently. I have to trust the robin’s snatches of song like drips from a melting icicle, the starling’s rush of wingbeats overhead. Narcissi’s tender green shoots...
by Helen Ivory | Jan 4, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
Her Yorkshire Puddings Every Sunday he insists on beef from Boggs’s butchers, a forty minute drive away. Mother has no respite from that blasted gas oven, her apron, or the vegetable peeler. Her Yorkshire puddings disastrous, until she fakes it...
by Helen Ivory | Jan 3, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
Hard To Say What He Did It’s hard to say what he did, my father. His shoulders portaged crates, he captained boats in the night, chocolate eggs would appear which smelt of ChefChaouen. He taught me to listen out for bells and police sirens....
