Eyewear is very pleased to welcome poet Annie Katchinska (pictured) this Friday. She seems to me to be one of the most impressive young poets currently writing in London, perhaps England, which is why I was glad to publish her work recently, online at Nthposition.Katchinska is 18 and lives in London. She has been a Foyle Young Poet of the Year twice and in 2007 came second in the Christopher Tower poetry competition. She is on the editorial team of Pomegranate, an online zine publishing poets under 30.
Too Many Storms
Often, pretending to sleep, I hear my father
in the next room, importantly flicking his books.
Sometimes he hums –
a song from the summer he said he’d hung a thousand wind chimes
in high places, dark places my eyes could never reach –
He hasn’t been himself.
He says there are too many storms on this island,
not enough elsewhere. He won’t explain this word,
insists I learn to play chess then snaps
that I hold the king too tightly
and scatters the pawns. I sweep up bewildered ivory.
Now he walks among the trees, kicking all the foliage;
now he’s taken to wearing robes
of boiling velvet, whirlpools of blue. He kneels by the shore,
his hands running through bright shells,
half-weeping over the clockwork tides,
promising freedom to the air.
I read his books in secret,
thumb the pencil-scratched footnotes
he keeps me awake with. In them,
children have wings, monsters are conquered
by other monsters, men who look like my father
line their wrists with stars and everywhere
there is furious physics,
a sense of time running out,
talk of splintering ships
poem by Annie Katchinska; photograph copyright Oleg Katchinski
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