Tag: Scunthorpe poet

An immigrant dared to sing

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I was very excited to have been shortlisted for The Bridport Prize in 2022, with this poem! It was inspired by an incident which occurred as I sat in the hospital gynaecology department. An immigrant woman, heavily pregnant, was trying to communicate to the receptionist, but had no English. The receptionist was shouting at the woman as though she were a second class citizen. Talk about dehumanisation! 

AN IMMIGRANT DARES TO SING


The bellies are fecund, dumpling-doughed 
in their roundness. 

The names roll, no one choking.  
I clutch my pot, all yellow, all of it. 

In walks a womb. A refugee cradles it.
It is full of child but does not exist for

its mother has no tongue to match our ears and
she knows none of our songs.

The receptionist gets loud and slow, and people stare.
This woman has the audacity, they say

to bring her womb to birth babies, steal roofs
from heads and snatch notes from palms. 

To sleep with ears not bleeding and folds of flesh
safe in the knowledge they’re her own.

I am ashamed to be English. 
To nurture a visible womb.

I am unable to sing Arabic.

©2022 Sarah Drury

A Bluebird in 8 Ways

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A BLUEBIRD IN EIGHT WAYS
                           ~ After Wallace Stevens
 
I

A poet is a bluebird
who drizzles the sky
with indanthrene songs 

II

I am making words
out of the bluebird’s tongue,
littered on the paper 
like a rejection letter.

III

The bluebird looks at me
with its reticent eye - 
wants to sprinkle lies
in the blackbird’s ear.

IV

I have no time for cheats.
Bluebirds are full of infidelity,
wagging their sweet 
little tails at the worms.

V

I know a fine song
if it licks my heels.
I smile and my breast heaves
at the fortissimo.

VI

When the bluebird flies away
the chicks’ chasm-jaws 
snatch at a stopped watch.

VII

The snow dusts the blue wings.
Makes snow angels on the ice.
I fall, my womb a pomegranate.

VIII

I never did fit in a box.
Too big dreams for a small forest.
No blackbirds with carbon plumage.
I want diamonds. 

Copyright © Sarah Drury 2022


Wallace Stevens, (1954), 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird' from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. New York. Random House.


Images by krstnwatts0 and Johnny Gunn from Pixabay

39 Degrees

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39 degrees

 

Today I could cook my breakfast

on the pavement, spitting there,

between the doc ends and

discarded cheap-lager cans. Save

 

on the energy bills, al fresco

cuisine – dine with the homeless. The

eggs would gaze up at me like that

woman’s breasts sweating in her

 

Lycra, skimpy top. The sun has

hit pasty limbs hanging from

cheap shorts, chests bared to

the air – Men thinking that is

 

what we women want to see, as

we point, and ponder unbaked

baguettes. 39 degrees and we

are pink cuts on a butcher’s slab.

 

 

Am I a Poet?

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Am I a Poet?

Am I a poet?
Do the words that flow in book or on screen
Reflect dramatic emotions that go unseen?
Does my happiness make you smile?
Do you bare your satisfied teeth like a hungry crocodile?
Do my words of suicide hanging in the air like a cloud of despair
Destroy your sanctimonious bliss beyond repair?
Do they have you ringing 999 whilst you panic inconveniently in your chair?

Yeah, I thought so.

Am I a poet?
Are my words like rock salt on a frozen ice rink?
Does my punctation uncontrollably stammer,
is my modest pretense full of glamour?
Do I lift your sorry spirit or make your joyful heart sink?
Just because people smile doesn’t mean they are smiling
and just because they shout the loudest doesn’t mean they can sing.
And the words aren’t always soothing like a triple gin and tonic
They can fucking sting.

But I meant to do that.

Am I a poet?
Do I thrill you? Do I chill you to the arthritic bone?
Do the words paint pictures of terror, images so uncomfortable
That you get off Instagram and shut down your one thousand dollar phone?
Or do you take delight in the fright, in the sight,
In the horror before you, your nightmare Twilight Zone.
You’re a loser, you needed some company, you feel so alone.
You’re a regular sociopath, your friends have all gone.

Do I do that?

Am I a poet?
Do I live with my eyes in the tangerine sky?
With my mind up ahead in a fairytale shed
Do I dwell in the lands of the metaphoric
Reality not living up to the dream as I ask myself why.
As I deal in yarns of happy, happy, happy talky
Where the words paint a picture so far from my life I could cry.
Where I am a crack dealer, but the high is a visible lie
When the words fail to come, then my bullet is up and I tragically die.

A lie, right?

Am I a poet?
Or am I a purveyor of meaningless, nonsense words?
Or a dreamer of attainable dreams, a weaver of worrysome woes
A creator of the highest joys, the lowest, the deadest, the absurd?
Do I bleed enough for you every night on screen?
For my words are my creative, poetic blood.
Each night I slit my wrists again and again
Just for the chance that I might strike gold
That my words might actually be love
That my life might actually
Be inspired from above.

But Am I a Poet?

© Sarah Drury 2019