Sarah Salway: Featured Poet

Conception

A winter night, his mouth on her breast
so soft the spring inside her wound tight
following the trail of it, his breath
whispering she should open up, not fight,
and she did, darling. She was one long
ache, hard to see where she ended
and he began. Then such strong
aching, hard to see where she ends
and the baby began. They become one long
whisper, opening up without a fight,
losing the trail of themselves, breath
so real the spring inside winds tight
feeling the shock of what’s happening
this spring night, new mouth on her breast.

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Sarah Salway is the current Canterbury Laureate. She is the author of three novels and a collection of short stories. Her poems have won significant prizes in competitions organized by Poetry London, the Essex Poetry Festival and The New Writer, and have appeared in publications including the Financial Times, the Virago Book of Shopping, Mslexia, Pen International and Poetry London. Visit her website

Sarah’s collection You Do Not Need Another Self-Help Book is available now from Pindrop Press. See Sarah at the Phoenix Club, Charing Cross Road on March 8th 2012 for the launch.

Martin Figura: Featured Poet

Photo: Sam Christmas

Norwich, Midnight

 

Sensing somehow earthquake or fire
creatures scurry through Mousehold Heath.
The moon snags on the cathedral’s spire
as we walk home down Magdalen Street;

through the inner ring road underpass
the piss-yellow glow of the Oxfam shop,
in whose doorway we stop and kiss
kebabs in hand, with greasy chops.

Anglia Square has never looked so beautiful
littered as she is with burger boxes.
Praise the Lord and the City Council
down from the Heath come the urban foxes.

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Martin Figura lives in Norwich with the poet Helen Ivory.  His work ranges from the bitingly funny of his Boring The Arse off Young People to the dark subject matter of his Ted Hughes Award shortlisted collection and one-man-show Whistle.   He won the 2010 Hamish Canham Prize and has performed from New York to Cromer and is an Apples & Snakes Associated Artist.   His photography’s been widely published and exhibited, including at the National Portrait Gallery.  He runs the Café Writers live literature series in Norwich and is a founder member of Norwich Poetry Club.

www.martinfigura.co.uk

Karen Dennison: Featured Poet

Moon Landing

Your belly is rounded, palimpsest of moon.
Feet-up, you wait, eyes scanning the flickering screen.

The grainy transmissions are like the silvered crater
of my skull, the muffled chambers of my heart.

Through egg-shell skin, I see
a hazy light, turn like a heliotrope.

As he takes his momentous step, you feel
me kick. We're almost weightless, he and I,

suspended between worlds. But I resist
the pull of earth, the first breathless glimpse,

begin one last slow-motion somersault,
not yet ready to breathe for myself.

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Born in 1969, Karen Dennison’s passion for poetry began in her early thirties. Her poems have been published in South, Orbis, The New Writer, Ink Sweat and Tears and poetrywivenhoe 2011. Karen won the Indigo Dreams Collection Competition in 2011 and her first collection, Counting Rain, is published by Indigo Dreams.