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Poem by Sarah Corbett

Eyewear is very pleased to welcome Sarah Corbett (pictured) this Friday.

Corbett's first collection of poems, The Red Wardrobe, (Seren, 1998) was shortlisted for The Forward First Collection and the T.S. Eliot prize. Her second book from Seren was The Witch Bag (2002), and her third, Other Beasts, has just been published, this July.

She is currently writing a verse novel as part of a PhD at The University of Manchester. She lives in West Yorkshire with her son and writes full time.

I first met her when she read for an event I co-organized, a few years back, to celebrate the anniversary of the beginning of Imagism in London. It's good to see new work of hers out in the world; the poem below was, until now, unpublished.

Rainbow

In the hotel room we saw the beauty of home,
too far out to touch still, and effervescently moving,
played the ‘being home’ game, until it felt too real,
as if I’d stepped back and left you, watering the roses.

We read until dark and Pluto winked its blue eye
behind the curtain. There was too much clear space,
and the moment panning out was like the light breaking
over the valley, the rain coming over the Sierras.

The fan turned the warm air loudly and the same bee
reconnoitred the window. A chorus of car horns
repeated after the game, and in the gaps a she-cat mouthed
the necks of her kittens as she moved them.

When you left me, turning to the wall for sleep,
I smoothed the skin of your small tanned back,
the damp crook of your leg over the covers,
your slim bruised foot crossing Russia for home.

poem by Sarah Corbett
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