Poetry Focus On: PHOEBE POWER

Phoebe Power received one of the 2012 Eric Gregory Awards, just announced last week. She was also a Foyle Young Poet of the Year in 2009, and her poems have appeared in Orbis, Pomegranate, Domestic Cherry and Fire. Last year, she had a poem iced onto cake by Poetry Digest. She is based near Penrith, and is currently studying English at Cambridge. You can read her poems atphoebepower.blogspot.com.

Mr –

Always in my back room.

Swinging landscape painting,

this woollen, curlsome mass.

Caught in the seams of a shadow or stencil

it’s him, the familiar place.

I would burst past handwriting,

be wrapped in voice and eyes, but

flotsam, sharp stones. A dam.

My head gongs metal, and spins

dizzily away. I have rehearsed this

for five years, killing myself

very slowly. My body

would mature but its new growths

denature, deform

as I ram and ram against him,

through every second’s pore,

while he smiles at the wall like a buddha

backlighting the studio of my mind.

If he was a god, I could believe in him.

But

poem by Phoebe Power; published online with permission of the author

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