Writing
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My belly is as round as the green hill
My belly is as round as the green hill That they say the devil made with his hands Scooping out a ditch, down which rolled the water Now the wide and silver Severn. My baby will not come. I have tried sex. I have tried pineapple. Nothing scratches at the womb enough To make it […]
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Italian tourist
I could dive into the colours, inhale the colours, eat the colours with my eyes, be lost in them old Italian buildings: faded pale yellow peeling ochre salmon-pink terracotta red balconies overspilling with flowers,green plants and the colours, and the colours, are just glorious, peeling away to the two-tone stone beneath, white marble and brown […]
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Winter Walk
In the still moment of winter’s short day Pale sun over the hills & hidden valleys And the russet-brown kestrel holding the sky firm against the wind – We are walking Your shoelace is broken & trailing in the mud & your black coat is raggedy But you are talking to me & I am […]
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You can walk now
YOU CAN WALK NOW A year ago not yet born Silent, kicking, stretching out my stomach Stretching out time until I could not move or think except when I hauled myself up Cam Peak straight up, me, and you inside, unknown, closer to me and more known than you’ll ever be, a great big foot […]
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Poem for my daughter
A poem written for four month old Nera. You sprang so wise from the womb it seems your dark eyes look so solemnly upon the world. Your eyes are blue like the sea’s depths in mid-ocean, depths of my swimming dreams you swam inside me, dreaming yourself, as a fish, as a kicking child, as […]
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The First of January Nineteen Ninety Five
The sky of dreams reminds me of its blue there’s waves of wind coming through the trees-sea. Last night I died my head split & body purged itself of blood and bile. So the old year went down with me. After darkness we rise! Newborn the world today with myself, the year, the day. Sun […]
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To My Friend The Vendor
A poem about my Irish friend Paul who was a Big Issue vendor.
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Daisy: 2nd place poem 1984 Surrey Advertiser
Second place aged 16 in the Surrey Advertiser Poetry Competition! “A quiet poem for second place, clearly spaced and taking the eye very much at its own speed. There is no attempt to disturb the set tone by inserting anything which approaches the startling. I felt that Doina Cornell knew precisely what she was aiming […]
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Tiger
The tiger prowls, pacing back and forth across the cage, dreaming of freedom before this, this futile pacing back and forth, the hunk of meat glaring red in the bleak concrete desert Those staring pale faces are amusing as he paces back and forth, musing on freedom: chasing, killing, eating a mate to win, but […]