2015 MELITA HUME POETRY PRIZE SHORTLIST FOCUS: MICHAEL CONLEY

A TEACHER FROM MANCHESTER AND A POET

Michael Conley is a 30-year-old teacher from Manchester. He has been published in a variety of magazines including Magma, Rialto, Interpreters House and Bare Fiction. His first pamphlet, Aquarium, was published by Flarestack in 2014. The poem here below is from his shortlisted collection for the Melita Hume Poetry Prize 2015.

We Discover A Severed Thumb In The Woods

Lying either side of it,

we play

who dares get their tongue closest.

It nestles

in a pile of wet leaves, real

as a joke thumb.

It mightn't be a thumb after all;

could be a stubby finger.

It's hard to tell

without the context of a hand.

It smells like

the thing you can’t find

in the fridge.

You are winning: your tongue

is practically touching it.

Comments

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In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

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