It was December and it is IS&T so you know that our shortlist for that month would be that little bit slanted, that little bit skewed, particularly with half the offerings from our ’12 Days of…’ feature and the others all too real, or surreal. What these works share is their quality. So which will you choose?
- Erica Hesketh, ‘And peace to men on earth’, the epitome of a slanted Christmas on IS&T, the familiar Christmas sparkle has been sharpened enough to cut.
- Alison Jones,‘Astral Projection’, all about unlikely juxtapositions – features of both surrealism and humour – and meeting William Blake in a winceyette nightdress
- Jenny McRobert, ‘We play Candy Crush’ paints a whole world, rife with images you won’t forget, where objects are human, and humans like players in a game
- Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad, ‘Lacrimosa, 2004’, The imagery, the collage, the restraint in the poem brings out the pain in such layered ways.
- Anne Symons, ‘Crushed’, Says so much with so little…all woven together just right.
- Joe Williams,‘A Town of Shadows’ charts generations of harm to the working classes with lightly controlled language and a refrain which holds the narrator inside the town with each repetition.
Please VOTE HERE. Voting will close at 6pm on Friday 24th January.
All six of the shortlist have been chosen by Helen, Kate and Zahra or received the most attention on social media. They can be found below. (Please scroll down.)
Our ‘prize’ is £20 towards the charity of your choice or an emailed National Book Token giftcard*.
*Book tokens can only be used within the UK. Sadly, we are unable to find suitable cost-effective alternatives outside the UK.
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THE DECEMBER 2024 PICK OF THE MONTH SHORTLIST
And peace to men on earth
O little no of nerve-endings
how full we signs of teeth.
Away the day and dreamless thought
intrusive tinselled wreath.
Yet in this marriage sleeping
persistent clanging weight;
the paper strewn of love-worn years
are sodden sky tonight.
Precociousness of merry
and babbled sippy cold
while mortals tile the Sertraline
their strips of tepid pool.
O glitter bauble family
in secret overcast,
then bright eyes sing to ravaged was
and weeks to later first.
Erica Hesketh’s poems have appeared in The North, Magma and Under the Radaramong others. Her debut collection, ‘In the Lily Room’, will be published by Nine Arches Press in May 2025.
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Astral Projection
Mrs Norris had thought ascension
would be whirligig rides in bright violet rays,
as the training books all implied.
She worked hard on her technique
diligently preparing an inner world,
a kaleidoscopic version of her garden,
neat box hedges, with glittering leaves,
flourishes of fragrant perennials, blooming
out of season riots of brilliant intensity.
She had not expected to find herself
scaling a mighty yew tree’s limitless body,
gazing up the muscular trunk, marvelling
at the slope of reality receding to a grain
of sand, which languished somewhere
in the middle. She met William Blake
on the node of branch, he greeted her
with shining eyes, while she pulled
at the hem of her winceyette nightdress,
wondering why she hadn’t the foresight,
to wear sensible outdoor clothing,
or at least a stout pair of sky-blue brogues.
Alison Jones’ work has been widely published in journals such Poetry Ireland Review, Proletarian Poetry, The Interpreter’s House, The Green Parent Magazine and The Guardian. Her pamphlets, Heartwood (2018) and Omega (2020) were published by Indigo Dreams. She is working on a full collection, and an interdisciplinary project bringing together poetry, music, art and film.
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We play Candy Crush
We run upstairs and trace our fingers over Ariana Grande’s face. We hold fruit sweets
to the light like crown jewels, we gum-up our fingers with orange segments from
the market, zesty with possibility. We play Candy Crush. In this place, each house has
the face of its owner: here is a wide red door grinning with jokes, ginger-headed pantiles,
a gutter bent like a crooked smile, standpipes, wonky like broken backs. We spy through
spider web windows, pretend to run upstairs, bounce on their beds and play Candy Crush.
We turn to see the city booming grey smoke like a video game. We look up to blue sky,
and at cathedrals with gold glow-domes. We barter with God. Count the stairs;
one, two, three, exposed like broken ribs. We play in upturned streets, in thrilling
zig-zagged concrete basements, skin our shins, bounce over rubble, over the smothered
voice of a small, blue shoe stubbornly tapping out the songs Babusya taught, its strap
still upright as a shoot. We say to ourselves, it will not be too late as we look for more stairs
to count, more streets where houses are still alive and the tarmac is black and cool. No bones
are bleaching white as we run up and down and up. From the top, we trace our fingers
over shadows playing Candy Crush in someone else’s bedroom, in someone else’s Country where they all still have stairs.
Jenny McRobert won The Kathryn Bevis Prize, 2024 and was shortlisted for Bridport and The Rialto. She won the International Welsh Poetry Competition in 2023. Her debut collection, Silver Samovar, was published by The High Window Press in 2021.
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Lacrimosa, 2004
//There is a new star in the eastern sky tonight, spilling fourteen prongs of light. I feel the first flutter in my belly.
//The last time I stood by the sea, the waves snaked in and swept my shoes away in one quick lick of tide. I walked home barefoot over rocks that cut into the pads of my feet. I muddied the marram grass with ruby footprints.
//On the counter, an expectant rectangle of white slowly displays two lines of red. They deepen in hue and shimmer like festive candy canes. Positive.
//My grandmother’s ghost visits at dawn. She whispers that what is meant for me will always be mine.
//When I cradle my bump, it is the convex shape of a papaya half, firm and oblong, a safe outer shell. I dream of faithful spirits bringing precious gifts, of shooting stars streaked with gold.
//Mistletoe, a brand-new tree, baubles and lights, and a nativity diorama made of clay. I slip into restful sleep thinking of the Virgin and her precious child, and see the silhouette of a magpie moth in the deepest cavern of my body.
//A raven in the magnolia tree caws all day long. Feathers strewn on the moss rustle like an unkind omen.
//Christmas night. My shoe is a silent lake of blood. Muffled cries rumble in the glass vault of a cold ward. How swiftly the womb wilts from a viable cocoon to an empty husk. Rain lashes the panes with unparalleled fury. On the TV screen, images flash of a wall of water pummelling a faraway shore. Banda Aceh buckles under an incensed ocean.
//There is no gentle way to be told of your loss. Tectonic plates open like gashes.
//Diffused voices in the dark whisper of the boon of youth, the certainty of bearing fruit again. I don’t want platitudes. All I crave is an ounce of compassion.
//A jade figurine of the Madonna watches from a shelf on the wall. Calla lilies droop over my IV-numbed arms.
//The night light glows above the nurses’ station in a ring of amber blue. Through the speakers comes the faint strain of Holy Night. The stars are brightly shining. I look outside into the predawn sky. What they say of the stars is true.
Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is an Indian-Australian artist, poet, and improv pianist. She lives and works on the traditional lands of the Eora Nation in Sydney.
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Crushed
She was only a little woman
five feet nothing in nylon stockings.
If I stood sideways they’d mark me absent.
Lightweight in her youth
the heaviness came later.
See what you did to me she’d say,
scar stretching red across her belly,
this is where they cut you out.
So when one day she accidentally
trod and broke my napkin ring,
a silver christening gift,
I kept it as it was — distorted.
Anne Symons comes from Cornwall. After a career teaching deaf children and adults Anne began writing poetry in retirement. She completed an MA in Writing Poetry at Newcastle University and the Poetry School in London. Her debut pamphlet Shifting Sands, was published by Littoral Press this year.
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A Town of Shadows
Ashington
I was born in a town of shadows.
The shadow of the black bridge,
where boys would crawl, hand by hand,
under rails in Beeching’s gaze,
cheating teenage death by drop
into the lazy Wansbeck.
The shadow of the Charltons,
who kicked their way out of here,
swapped a life of dirt and toil
for Wembley and Jules Rimet,
cheered on by the mining lads
through envy-gritted teeth.
I was born in a town of shadows.
The shadows of the coal rows,
lined up in parallel,
numbered like a New York map,
named for Shakespeare’s heroines
and upward-mobile trees.
The shadow of the pit wheels
that lowered men to dust-choke dark
to dig out black prosperity,
the rock on which this town was built,
till slamming to their final stop,
class war thrown in the spokes.
I was born in a town of shadows.
The shadow of the 80s,
when Thatcher and MacGregor took
a hatchet to the working man.
Divide and rule, divide and rule,
son, father, friend, neighbour.
See this town is on its knees
and kick it in the guts.
The shadow of the dole queue,
from Woodhorn Road to Rhondda,
lining up for cast-off crumbs,
another week of nothing for
someone with your skill set.
Go back home, don’t complain,
and better luck next time.
I was born in a town of shadows.
A shadow on a lung.
Joe Williams is a writer and performing poet from Leeds. His latest book is The Taking Part, a pamphlet of poems on the theme of sport and games, published by Maytree Press. joewilliams.co.uk X: @JoeWilliamsPoet Insta: @joewilliamsleeds