Bryony Littlefair Archives

Posted on August 23, 2024August 23, 2024 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘First Job’ by Bryony Littlefair

Close up photo of stacked, chocolate coins wrapped in shiny golden foil.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘First Job’ by Bryony Littlefair from her debut collection Escape Room.

First job
I worked at Boots on Thursday evenings,
stacking shower gels in unnatural colours,
telling blurry-looking women where to find the ibuprofen,
but usually I’d be on the downstairs till,
where a customer came every twenty minutes
grabbing a salad for a late dinner, a stick
of deodorant or baby wipes. They’d meet
my eyes so briefly. Boredom spread
like liquid magnolia soap. Once I picked up
the magazine they kept by the tills –
Health and Beauty, on which
a smiling white woman
played volleyball on the beach.
Suzanne, who was neither unkind
nor stupid, only tired and harassed, said
Don’t read that while you’re on the till.
There’s no one here, I said, looking around,
but I did as she asked and put it away
feeling a twinge of annoyance,
but a strange, building feeling too
not unlike excitement – not because I refused,
but because I was growing an understanding
of what was being asked of me, and I turned
that new knowledge over
in my closed mouth,
like a chocolate coin.

Posted on May 19, 2023May 19, 2023 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘Some Therapists’ by Bryony Littlefair

As it is Mental Health Awareness Week, this week’s Friday Poem is ‘Some Therapists’ by Bryony Littlefair from her debut collection Escape Room.

Some therapists
1. One believed in karma.
2. Another would take a drag on their cigarette and say fuck it, here’s what I think you should do.
3. Number three took payment in the form of origami animals I had to fold myself.
4. Refused to laugh at my jokes, but sometimes a giggle escaped anyway. I started living for those lapses in composure.
5. Made me speak to them from the next room, so I’d have to shout.
6. Believed in God.
7. Would tell me what they were doing that evening – baking a ginger loaf, going to a wine bar with their cousin.
8. Would say I’m so sorry for your loss, I’m so sorry for your loss, over and over – when the last person I loved who died was my Grandad and that was three years ago. It was a peaceful death and he was 91. I’d say all this and they’d just look at me with wet, earnest eyes. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how much pain you must be in.
9. Read all my poems tenderly, forensically.
10. Read none. Showed no interest whatsoever.
11. Took payment in the form of poems.
12. Had a pen-pot on the desk when I arrived. Twenty minutes in, swapped it for a candle. Forty minutes in, swapped the candle for a bunch of flowers.
13. Spoke only in nonsensical, reassuring idioms: Perhaps we could give him the benefit of the snout. Let’s call it a play. Hang in bear. You live and burn.
14. Spoke only in song lyrics, and by the time I realised this we’d already been working together for six months. We can’t return, we can only look behind, they’d say gently, or You don’t have to try so hard, and my eyes would well up.
15. Believed 9-11 was an inside job. They never said this, but I could tell.
16. How can I be happy? I begged. That’s not the question you really need to ask they said carefully. But it is! I swear it is! I cried, slapping the table.
17. Silently moved their chair around, so they were sitting next to me.
18. Leant forward and said What is it you’re not telling me?
19. Paid me. I keep thinking about going back.
20. Had a rule about eye contact. Look at me, and I’ll tell you about it.

Posted on September 16, 2022 by Simon appleby

Friday Poem – ‘The meaning of employable’ by Bryony Littlefair

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘The meaning of employable’ by Bryony Littlefair from her forthcoming debut collection Escape Room which will be published on National Poetry Day.

This cover shows a collage of a woman in 50s dress standing beside an easel showing a close up picture of a man's torso blocking out a burning building. There is a eerie photo of white lightning against dark clouds behind her. The text reads: Escape Room, Bryony Littlefair

Escape Room is the long-awaited debut collection by Bryony Littlefair. This is a collection exploring the possibilities of freedom, goodness, meaning and connection under late capitalism. Can we escape the imperatives of money, gender and human fallibility to freely construct our own identities – should we even try This complexity is balanced with a resolute joy, humour and irony. If you’ve ever grappled with ‘a desire you could not understand / like wanting to touch dark, wet paint’, had an identity crisis at a corporate away day, or just not known what to do with your Sunday morning, the Escape Room is open for you.

The meaning of employable
always changes, used to mean you could whittle or solder
and almost definitely had a dick. Now your genitals can be any shape,
in this part of the world anyhow. And whittling and soldering
don’t matter so much. And the meaning of employable
is something else, a bit to do with your handshake, how firm, how dry,
a bit to do with how well you balance sincerity and irony.
But not in a way anyone can define.
I want to do a backflip!
I am weak and clumsy, but I could learn. A good backflip is a good backflip.
We know of what we speak. It must be light and springy, legs tight together.
A pleasing arch of the spine. I’ll backflip into an interview, quick and light
and maybe they’ll be shuffling their papers when I do it – there’s four of them –
so no one would be sure they saw, and wouldn’t say anything about it to the others. All would be feeling funny.
Maybe I had too many coffees today. So the backflip would not be acknowledged, would not be turned into something else, like
‘oh, I suppose it shows humour?’ drawls one. ‘Demonstrates initiative!’
the mousy one pipes up.
No. It will just be a backflip, a perfect, secret backflip,
and I’ll be delightful in the interview, but I won’t get the job. ‘Great on paper.
But something wasn’t quite right,’ one will say, and they’ll murmur in agreement.
Because I created in everyone a private unease, which is not
the meaning of employable, but could well be the meaning of life.

Escape Room is available to pre-order on the Seren website: £9.99

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Posted on January 22, 2021 by Simon appleby

Friday Poem – ‘Dear Anne Monroe, Healthcare Assistant’ by Bryony Littlefair

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Dear Anne Monroe, Healthcare Assistant’ by Bryony Littlefair from her Mslexia prize-winning pamphlet Giraffe.

Poems need head, heart, and soul but this particular pamphlet has an extra ingredient – a feminist kick. There is a good deal of wit on display, but also a wonderful humanity. There are also other novelistic qualities: clarity of language and the use of realism, a feeling for plot and incident, an eye and ear for character. The author indicates emotion and relationships in a myriad of subtle ways: heartbreak can be summarised by one glance at the ‘Lido’. Love can be inferred by the tender description of someone from the back, as they are walking away. Giraffe, the title and a euphemism for happiness, is a beguiling, beautiful and entertaining debut pamphlet of poems.

Giraffe is available on the Seren website: £5.00

Create your free Seren account and enjoy 20% off every book you buy from us.

Posted on June 29, 2018 by Simon appleby

Friday Poem – ‘Dear Anne Monroe, Healthcare Assistant’, Bryony Littlefair

Friday Poem Bryony Littlefair Dear Anne Monroe NHS

July 2018 marks 70 years of the National Health Service Act and the NHS. In celebration, acclaimed poet Owen Sheers has produced a new ‘film-poem’ showing twenty-four hours in the NHS, ‘To Provide All People’ – now available to watch on BBC iPlayer. This week’s Friday Poem by Bryony Littlefair, ‘Dear Anne Monroe, Healthcare Assistant’, also gives us a glimpse inside our healthcare system.

An apology opens this powerful poem, in which a healthcare assistant faces up to a patient’s pre-op fear and resistance: ‘I’m sorry that my sister will not let you take her blood/ for the operation that will save her life.’ Everyday struggles are presented in a stark light: the ‘gulped-down cheese and lettuce/ sandwich’, the intrusive questioning of ‘where it is you’re from originally’.
The politics in Littlefair’s poems are mostly implicit in the stories told, only occasionally bursting through like an urgent message. Giraffe, her Mslexia Prize-winning pamphlet, expertly merges the poet’s wit and wonderful humanity with novelistic qualities and a feminist kick: this is a beguiling, beautiful and entertaining debut.

Giraffe is available from the Seren website: £5.00

Join our free Book Club for 20% off every book you buy from us.

Posted on January 5, 2018 by Simon appleby

Friday Poem – ‘Giraffe’, Bryony Littlefair

Our Friday Poem this week is the title poem from Bryony Littlefair’s Mslexia Prize-winning debut pamphlet, Giraffe.

Poems need head, heart, and soul but this particular pamphlet has an extra ingredient – a feminist kick. There is a good deal of wit on display, but also a wonderful humanity. There are also other novelistic qualities: clarity of language and the use of realism, a feeling for plot and incident, an eye and ear for character. The author indicates emotion and relationships in a myriad of subtle ways: heartbreak can be summarised by one glance at the ‘Lido’. Love can be inferred by the tender description of someone from the back, as they are walking away.
Giraffe, the title and a euphemism for happiness, is a beguiling, beautiful and entertaining debut pamphlet of poems.

Giraffe is half price in the Seren January Sale until 11 January: £2.50

Join our free Book Club for 20% off every book you buy from us after the sale ends.

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