Last weekend I visited the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern to see Mire Lee’s installation ‘Open Wound’. What I saw and felt inspired a poem. There are some photos below – but can’t do it justice – if you can visit, do.

I recently moved out of my old house and found packing books triggered more than back ache. The other two I present without context.

In other personal poetry news, I had a poem shortlisted in this year’s Bridport Prize, which is encouraging. Also, as they don’t publish shortlist poems, I have it back to send elsewhere.
So ‘Yey!’ – although of course I’d rather actually win.

Next month – in a poetry version of selling coal to Newcastle – I have a poem appearing in a prestigious Irish literary journal. Very pleased by this and I’ll share where you can read it when it is published.

All four of the above poems first appeared on Black Bough Poetry’s TopTweetTuesday – a cheering corner of the former twitter that offers more than ranting right-wing bigotry and bots.

On seeing Mire Lee’s Open Wound in the Tate Turbine Hall

Like skewered ghosts they hung;
shrouds shredded, exorcised by art.
Or perhaps the shed skins of punctured 
clouds, abandoned by all winds. 

Swinging there, within an interned slice 
of indoor sky. Dying drops squeezed out, 
plashing down on ground, emitting sound 
far too thick to be ordinary 

water. Then again, they might be red 
balloons, burst and wrinkled – colour 
faded to blood, dried-out on discarded 
bandage. And also: factory-finished corpses 

in an abattoir, flushed toilet paper, flotsam 
passing through industrial scale sewers. 
Can’t be sure exactly what the creator had
intended, but I suppose that this is what we saw. 

Packing books

Old, tacky tape, crinkled at the edges,
like brown piping curling down the length 
of out-of-fashion trouser legs, marks frontiers
on the folded cardboard boxes leant against the wall. 
Each blank surface staring, as if it is the pinched face 
of an idle smoker, scowling at the scene.

One by one they’re taken and reshaped. 
Stuffed with books until gorging on a weight of words. 
None mere repositories of knowledge, narrative or history, 
but beloved items full-freighted with the memory of past 
reading. As a younger version of yourself unwittingly 
advances, page by turning page, upon this day. 

The relic on the door

Still-life in black
denim. Hooked, 
jacket hangs and sags –
waiting to be worn 
again. Has no notion 
of its status as fading 
echo. Stitched reminder 

of a younger model; 
pulled on, then off.
Slung across a thousand 
chair backs, or bundled, 
inattentive, into corners. 
One day, finally to fall apart.

Orgasmic deli

Voluptuous curves 
of wild fruit, fanned flesh 
of cured hams, 
teasingly exposed, 
hand-carved 
in piquant slices, 
heaving rows 
of exquisitely 
packaged exotic 
nuts. All shake 

in the explosion, 
of a throaty laugh 
– neck’s soft skin 
revealed, in answer 
to a naïve question: 
why don’t you sell 
white sliced bread? 
For those in the queue;
not the climax 
we were expecting.