This week we’re putting the spotlight on debut poet and Children’s Laureate Wales Connor Allen. Isabelle Copland interviews our author about his new children’s collection Miracles. “Every child and every person on this planet is a miracle…” What inspired you first to pick up a pen and start writing? Reading Harry Potter as a child and escaping to Hogwarts was
He told me about the Borzoi,that he saw when he was a child –1956, roughlyHow he loved watching it runSo graceful, he was captivated And I can see it –the sun low in the sky,reflected in bright swipesacross the rippled sandThe beautiful creaturecutting across the landscape,fur damp from the wavesGliding, serene I can’t imagine his boy’s facebut I see his
If you don’t believe in magiclet me tell you something true,that the universe pulled itself apartjust so it could make you.The smallest of bonesonce belonged to something more,and every breath you’ve ever breathedhas been let out before.The parts of you that you don’t like,from your cheekbones to your thighs,were once held inside a shooting starthat burned up in the sky.An
To write poetry is to wring truth from an orangefurl your hands so tightly into rind they turn blue,hear the thudded fall of each kerneled pip into glasswhile its juice catches on the lips between thosegreedy molecules of air-perhaps a single drop, turgid and oilywill break out of the tangled pith in slow motiondetonate into twelve, glittering tearsand you might
There are times that I double-takeA split-second’s slow thinking, the staggeredNavigation, transgressions melting away When flesh drips from me I lose myself, entirelyThe waxy reds, wet pomegranate seeds slickingMy dresses. I remember distantly I am sentientA living, a breathing something. I materialise from obscurityEchoing limbs pulling fingers from faraway piesStapling together this misty body to remind meOf my greatest vice:
Due to restrictions this poem has modified formatting. I did not understand the hardshipof texting are you okayuntil I rolled over in bedand there you were, okay – I did not understandhow badly with love you had bitten meuntil I learned to understand how to clean for twohow to scissor out your hair from the vacuumhow to fold a dress,
All we are is snacks and bonesCream cracker corpsesRaisin rainbows risingI am swept in a black currantOf flapjack flashbacksAnd breadstick blues.We have no mealtime, no time at allWe surf the currant from hour to hourOurs is a tasty one, without crustsWe are so empty yet so full. A born and bred Londoner, Li-Li Nectar is an avid houmous-maker and life-long
I watched your hands find their way to marbled kitchens—a sorcerer of pots and pans—you found it hard to stand so you would sit—sinking in the velvet of our dinner chairs—casting culinary magic—humming Noor Jehan slightly out of tune—I look at our photograph—the one in Aga Khan hospital—you enshrouded in sky blue comfort—butterflies etched on your purse—me at 5 or
laughter is vulnerability. i have given out all of my aching. the way you attach sunflowers to your name. i love you but i won’t tell you. i will let you call me beautiful today and tomorrow. i will hold your hand reaching out to me across the window of a moving bus. i will travel for you. i will
the marrow curbed in my bones has turnedinventor of dreams in the dark vegetation of night.say, every night comes with the nomenclatureof the dead (c)louding our dreams.or the names that will even/t(u)ally snug/ snugbullets in our skull as we lay on the duvet of the dark,unpaved street, eternal bedding.will my mother’s eyes swell with the sun or the sea?will i
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