Poetry Focus: Richard Scott

Eyewear is very pleased to welcome the British poet Richard Scott - pictured - this Ash Wednesday.

Richard Scott was born in London where he works as a musican and a teacher. Since graduating from Goldsmiths with an MA in Creative and Life Writing he won the Wasafiri New Writing Prize 2011 and was selected as a Jerwood/ Arvon Poetry Mentee 2011/ 2012. His work has been published twice in Poetry Review and twice in Poetry London.

Matins

After singing at church he walks the mile to the bathhouse

and enters the fug of men.

Not the smaller cabins intended for twos and threes

but the steam room

for the hands, the lips

that emerge from interior clouds

to work him in warm silence, kissing the head, anointing the shaft

as he recalls the altar’s lavish cloth

pouring down onto the cool stone floor,

the polished, perhaps solid-gold, candlesticks holding their burdens of white

slow-burning wax

and the kneeling figures in their scarlet robes

washing the grey taken-down body.

A woman has placed her fingers into the red hinge of a chest wound.

Below the words read:

Save me O God for the waters are come in

even unto my soul.

poem published online with permission of the author; copyright Richard Scott 2013.

Comments

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