Before the market town with the Pepper Pot building
and the concrete bus station and its standing water,
we were Hampshire, Beirut and Freetown
with neat shelves of Vimto, ivory, Milupa,
of Milton, tie-dyes, pink almonds and sugarcane.
I picture my poor legs straddling the continents
and note that I come missing certain accessories:
my birthright languages, my dowry earrings,
my baptismal faith, etiquette,
history and certainty of acceptance.
I was born into do well, say grace, press your clothes,
into an English market town hawking
wolf fleeces and salwar kameez
where the girls drink spritzers and the men, pints
and I’ve tried, I’ve tried to leave.
Jenny Pagdin’s pamphlet Caldbeck was published by Eyewear in 2017, shortlisted for the Mslexia pamphlet competition and listed by the Poetry Book Society. Longlisted for the Rebecca Swift Foundation prize 2018, and second prize winner in the Café Writers 2021 competition, she has work published with Smoke, Wild Court, Magma, The Stand, Finished Creatures, Ambit and an Emma Press anthology. Her first collection manuscript is being considered by publishers – like the pamphlet it tells the story of her postnatal psychosis. She is a graduate of Oxford University and holds a Creative Writing MA from the University of East Anglia. You can find more of Jenny at her website jennypagdin.co.uk or on Twitter, @PagdinJenny