Friday Poem

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Friday Poem – ‘Greenery’ by Judy Brown

Two tall apartment blocks flank the photograph. In the middle is a forest.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Greenery’ from Judy Brown’s latest collection Lairs.

Greenery When I moved to the city that no longer exists it was September. The air was brown fur growing thick round the candy cane buildings that poked through cloud and were lost. I could breathe, I could talk, but my bones grew longer and rang when sheet lightning flashed its show over the mainland. I ate without using knives or forks - not to be feral, but to slow myself down.

Don’t miss out on seeing Judy Brown and Graham Davies at our upcoming virtual First Thursday event. Tickets are £2 plus an Eventbrite fee. Book here:  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/705815231357.

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Friday Poem – ‘The River People’ by Cath Drake

A single white feather floating on the surface of a rippling river bed.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘The River People’ by Cath Drake from her collection The Shaking City. Cath recently came second in the Ginkgo Prize for Ecopoetry with her poem ‘Wadjemup Rottnest Island’.

The River People One day they just arrived, camped for days on our river island, waiting for swans, but none came. We don’t know who they were, why they weren’t moved on. They were sun-blushed, ethereal, used hand signals we’d never seen before. On our daily commute across the highway from island to city and back, we watched their canvas tents and sometimes a figure or two of a man, woman or child walking in the hot dust like a mirage. The bridge’s heavy traffic drowned any sound of the birds, tides, their daily doings. We couldn’t tell them when the swans disappeared. Would you have noticed if a highway, a skyscraper, or if the river vanished and there was just gravel under your feet? Will you still call this place Swan River? We felt their heavy ochre eyes. They made a swan shrine from a mass of grass, bark and reeds: its beak pointing skyward, long pampas grass feathers flying in the breeze. Every time we crossed the bridge we felt the loss, imagined their reflections in the water swimming with glossy black swans. One day, the River People just went. We didn’t get to ask them anything. The shrine eventually let go into the wind, blowing into the river, into our Swan River.

Cath also runs regular online workshops and mindfulness sessions as part of her ongoing event series The Verandah. The next season of events are due to begin in September including The Climate of Change Poetry Challenge and Dive into Poetry. Take a look at all of the courses she offers on her website cathdrake.com.

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Friday Poem – ‘Unfitting’ by Rachael Clyne

Close up photo of sparkling gold sequinned fabric

As Pride Month draws to a close, this week’s Friday Poem is ‘Unfitting’ by Rachael Clyne from her collection You’ll Never Be Anyone Else.

Catch Rachael at Bookhaus in Bristol from 7pm tonight (30th June) launching the book alongside Elizabeth Parker, Robert Walton and Claire Williamson. Buy tickets from bookhausbristol.com.

Unfitting After Caroline Bird Like a glove on the wrong hand, the moon out at noon. I was salt in tea, shoving my leg into a sleeve, stuck on the singles table at weddings, stifling the crush on my best friend, calling my partner they, or trying to book a double room in a B&B. How I distanced myself from those women in the bar on the Kings Road, where some wore cufflinks, others, heavy perfume, tight dresses. I couldn’t bear a skirt, without the safety of a gusset. The chips from my shoulders make a magnificent outfit: gloved, salty and glued with gold.
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Friday Poem – ‘Cei Newydd’ by Paul Henry

Photo of a small wooden rowing boat drifting along in blue-grey waters.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Cei Newydd’ by Paul Henry from his Wales Book of the Year shortlisted collection As If To Sing.

Cei Newydd We drifted out one afternoon on a dinghy’s water-bed, woke to no sight of the shore. We had not been born. A panic of oars scratched the wilderness and the harbour came back to us, our mothers on the pier. The salt on the fishing nets tasted the same. Soon, Brown Helen, we shall drift out again.

Voting is now open for the Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice Award. Vote for your favourite book on this year’s shortlist via the Wales Arts Review website.

Vote now

Click below or scan the QR code to preview the first 15 pages of As If To Sing

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