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2015 MELITA HUME POETRY PRIZE SHORTLIST FOCUS: BEN PARKER


POET-IN-RESIDENCE AT THE MUSEUM OF ROYAL WORCESTER
 
Ben Parker’s debut pamphlet, The Escape Artists, was published by tall-lighthouse in 2012 and shortlisted for the 2013 Michael Marks Award. He is currently poet-in-residence at The Museum of Royal Worcester.

Church Flatts Farm

All night the waves are in his room
lifting him from half-dreams
of bladder-wrack and drift-wood.
The walls breathe like filling sails,
the blood-tide beats in his ears,
he is feverish and sleepless, far
from instruments, with no navigator
and the Pole Star lost behind plaster.

When arthritis closed around his hands
he left the sea and made his way here,
the furthest he could move inland,
and stripped his boat to make a bed.
Mornings now he wakes with dry lips,
salt-blur glazing the window.


poem copyright the author 2015

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