by Helen Ivory | Mar 4, 2021 | Featured, Poetry
Workshop for Shy Self-Promoters Although I have never been on the pushy side of unassertive, what precedent in tactical avoidance I’ve established for shy self-promoters!: a workshop on low-visibility preening in Ray Bans and balaclavas by Inspirational...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 3, 2021 | Featured, Poetry
The Human Market Animals gather beneath a plasma screen in the square: a colony of lemurs with calculators in their paws, lizards with phones that twitter and purr. How did you get here, naked, bruised, unshaven? An owl scratches numbers into your...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 2, 2021 | Featured, Poetry
Emily Little love, I see your face, so like your grandfather’s. There is the obvious – his July-lion’s mane tamed to your September copper. But me in the middle, part him, part you, I was always too distracted by laundry, homework, things that keep...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 1, 2021 | Featured, Poetry
1901: The Interpretation of Owls (Four owls on a branch, and one on its own, all smoking long churchwarden clay pipes, and listening to the music of a songbird in front of a giant moon – like five patients waiting for wise Dr Freud.) The First...
by Helen Ivory | Feb 28, 2021 | Featured, Poetry
Vaccination Day At the surgery my mother doesn’t want to wait in the car, keeps opening the door. It’s deadly out there, and all I can think is she’s going to say Yoohoo! It’s Mrs … yoohoo! No one is actually warm enough. Mr Poole never does turn...
by Helen Ivory | Feb 27, 2021 | Featured, Poetry
A safe den When my girlfriends come we delineate our territories. I build a fence with a cradle, two chairs and a stool, a cut-out space that protects and defines against trespassing. Knitted blankets cover my baby dolls, rags are my curtains. I arrange...
