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New Arrivals

Poems written about my own children.

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One Year In


One year in, still adjusting to the title: mother.

Although, all you have to do is push out a child.

No previous experience required, no particular books

on the reading list. Life is now more weather-

dependant than before (must remember rain cover); it’s writing

shopping lists daily, and it’s the constant teaching


of tiny skills (no biting! no scratching!). Still, teaching

undergraduates feels remarkably similar: mother-

henning them to remember to keep to their writing

deadlines; getting emails more whiney than my child

gets before lunchtime; awkward tutorial chat about the weather

and knowing they’ll ignore my recommended books.


I am amused, daily, at the variety of books

I now read: Postman Bear, and the ones teaching

us Baby’s First Words (toys, vehicles, the weather,

xylophones and zebras), versus Sylvia Plath’s mother-

struggles, or Shakespeare’s ‘But were some child

of yours alive that time…’, or reverend academics writing


for a coterie of other academics (or for students writing

essays that will quickly be forgotten). Books,

once almost sacred, are now roughly pulled from shelves by my child

(considerate treatment of books is something we’re still teaching),

and reading is a rare luxury, it seems, for a mother.

It’s hard to see, at this point, whether


or not I’ll get back to the books. The weather

outside today is gloomy; a wet day, good for writing

poetry. Except that we need bananas and milk. Mother-

duties beckon. It’s time to leave the books,

to pack away the photocopied teaching

resources, to wrestle a snowsuit onto a child


and march to the shops. Because this child

is my greatest achievement to date. Whatever the weather,

his smile chases my clouds. He is teaching

us, constantly, as together we are writing

a family. Creating, making (ignoring the books

on parenting, and ‘helpful’ advice on being mother


and father to this child). With him, we’re writing

songs, poems, our story – whether or not they’ll end up in books

or albums. He is teaching me to be a mother.

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For E

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Your

smile is the shape of pure joy,

the

outline

of

sheer happiness, loved boy.

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Night Feed


Your small hand grips my wrist in an almost caress

which would be far less tender were you not

on the verge of sleep. Ignoring this

I choose to accept your trailing fingertips

as unadulterated affection,

a return of the gentleness

that you inspire in me, my youngest.


It occurs to me that you may one day

perfect this caress upon the wrist of a lover;

but for this moment, we are all to each other.

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New Arrivals: Work
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