Laurens, France

Writer, teacher, researcher and translator, though I prefer to think of myself as a poet, I was born and raised in Leeds but always had restless feet, and went on to study Literature in Scotland, London, the States and now France, where I have been living for most of my adult life. I am currently completing a PhD in Comparative Literature at Paris 8 University and write mainly on contemporary life stories of people of immigrant background in France and the UK, particularly in their oral, poetic, and/or lyric forms. My poetry (which sits somewhere between confessional and prosaic pastoral, often anchored in ideas of nostalgia for a return to nature, and my own rootlessness) has been published in a range of on-and-offline magazines and publications and I have performed it in a handful of venues in London and Paris, including Paris' famous Shakespeare & Co bookshop.

Two Poems   Wipe-Clean Life    Dizzy in Sepia Tones

Poem written 31st March 2020

Wipe-clean Life

How many surfaces do you touch in a day?

Put it another way:

How many surfaces do you make contact with in a day? Every day?

What do you leave on them?

Crumbs and grease

A few dead skin cells

Chipped acrylic or soap residue?

Is this the trace you leave?

Or just COVID-19?

Wet your hands

Soap them to a lather

Rub between your fingers

And under your nails

Turn the tap back on

Place your hands under

And repeat

Pick up the bleach spray

Pulverise and obliterate every trace of life

That may have made the sink its haven

The counter its mooring quay

Hope that the virus drowns with them

Wipe rinse squeeze sponge up rinse leave

And repeat

And repeat

I am

On repeat

How many items do you grasp and finger at –

As you make your breakfast?

As you prepare your coffee?

As you ready your lunch?

As you cook your dinner?

(Let’s not forget your snack or apéritif)

As you clear all this away again?

Where do you place all these items – and whence did you take them?

How many doors pushed, knobs turned, handles held?

What did you leave on them?

Sweat, butter, washing-up liquid, urine, wine, dog hair, dust, the common cold?

What lingers after you wash your hands?

Who else touched and left their traces, today, yesterday?

They say it may remain viable on plastic for five days

In damp unwashed corners, in liquid

For over two weeks

So press pause

Rewind

It’s time to grab the bleach

Feel your jugular pulsing

That fire in your forehead

Now…

Repeat

15th May 2020

Dizzy in Sepia Tones

Grey and heavy it falls

In crushed velvet curtains

And I thought it was snowing

I cannot remember my age

Nor if it is November or May

There are fewer colours

In these many shades of green

Between the eyelashes crosshatching my view

I have had the time

For introspection

A world of navel gazing and we are

Dizzy in sepia tones

Another limb in the breadbasket

Sliced off clean before breakfast

Another hole where once I could have reached

Held or built or sewn

Or sown

Patterns in the parquet

Symmetrical tessellations

Repeating like the things we see through screens

Shuttered windows and shattered iPads

And flash that gives no insight

Is not a bright light

Only a shudder of anxiety

And we keep trying to forget

Keep forgetting how to converse

With our bodies and

Eye to open eye

Your tongue torn out on cold ceramic

Served by wilting flowers on the lunch table

Your tongue that never learnt another idiom

Which could have nourished it

With which it could have sung

Wind whipped clouds like

So much meringue and cream

Fill so much changing sky

Disorientated we stare only

At paths we did not want to choose

And must be guided to recognise

And when we raise our eyes

Only the orange twilight

Of cities heaving and tugging

At unnatural rhythms

And the wind will not take us away

Nor flood nor burning sun

We chose to sever and recoil and withdraw

They cannot be undone

Entrails stomach and intestine freely pour

Across the dining room floor

Entrails the colour of bright claret de Bordeaux

They did not digest

They had forgotten how

Now they burst out from the navel

We have all watched so closely

And we achieve infinity

Numb and dizzy

In fading sepia tones