Cheryl Pearson’s poem brings us to that terrifying precipice - that utter fear, that overwhelming sensation that something is going to happen to the person/people most important to us, most crucial to our very survival. There is an air of agoraphobia, of being unable to brave the cruel outside in the line ‘I don’t want … Continue reading Protection Spell For A Lover by Cheryl Pearson
Author: Kirsten Luckins
Poet, performer, creative producer, creative practitioner. Artistic director Tees Women Poets. Writer-in-residence - Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (2019-20)
Facilitator - Celebrating Change community digital storytelling project (2018-2020)
Publications - The Trouble With Compassion (Burning Eye Books, 2016); Utterly Otterly (Bx3, 2018)
Theatre shows - The Moon Cannot Be Stolen (2014), The Trouble With Compassion (2016)
Tincture by Bob Beagrie
Bob Beagrie’s ‘Tincture’ walks us perfectly through a numb haze. It employs claustrophobia and disjointedness as he paces the familiar rooms of his home which become a parallel word of strangeness. He is ‘inhabiting her slumberlands’. The sharp dart of the words ‘parietal lobe’ are like a stone thrown into a stifled pond. It is … Continue reading Tincture by Bob Beagrie
Two poems by Sharon Black
As someone who cannot control her eating or weight and has spent years trapped in this terrible cycle, this poem resonated with me so much. Lines like ‘because it weighs her like ballast/because it fits like a straitjacket’ are so full of truth. This poem exactly replicates the feelings of shame and loneliness that I … Continue reading Two poems by Sharon Black
La Rochelle by Anne Gill
Anne Gill’s poem ‘La Rochelle’ is heartbreaking. It offers a tender, loving yet blistering snapshot into caring for someone you love during their illness. The fine-honed imagery of fish and bones is particularly affecting - I struggle with poems that seem to bounce from image to unconnected image and this poem is all the more … Continue reading La Rochelle by Anne Gill
Whistle If You Want To by Grant Tabard
‘Whistle if You Want To’ has a beautiful, heartbreaking sense of antiquity, is a hymn to an almost forgotten time with its ‘Frankie Lane’, ‘cheerio’ and ‘radio waves’. I loved this poem’s neatness and avoidance of sentimentality. It is the more affecting for that. The last three lines are so piquant with emotion. - Jane … Continue reading Whistle If You Want To by Grant Tabard
Two poems by Anathema McKenna
‘We Woke’ manages to contain much within its sparse waste-no-word form. There is the sharply distilled beauty in phases 'We turned to folk remedies,/colour theory, blue cloths' and ‘that melted ice goes somewhere,’ as well as the hissing alliteration which really does convey the seething anger of the poet. McKenna pulls no punches but still … Continue reading Two poems by Anathema McKenna
Question by Marg Roberts
Welcome to a series of weekly poems, selected by guest editor Jane Burn on the theme of Trauma. We start with Question by Marg Roberts. Jane says ‘Question’ is a snapshot into a surreal world. It has an uncomfortable air of other-worldly un-belonging, a suffocating sense of displacement. It speaks of a fate that so … Continue reading Question by Marg Roberts
