Laurie Bolger, "Makeover"

 

Laurie Bolger is a London-based writer and founder of The Creative Writing Breakfast Club. Her debut pamphlet Box Rooms (Burning Eye) has been featured at Glastonbury, TATE, RA & Sky Arts. Laurie’s writing has appeared in The Poetry Review, The London Magazine, Magma, Stand, and Trinity College Icarus. Her poems and short stories have been shortlisted for The Bridport Prize, Live Canon, Winchester and Sylvia Plath Prizes. In 2023, Laurie’s poem ‘Parkland Walk’ was awarded The Moth Prize, judged by Louise Glück, and Highly Commended in the Forward Prize for Poetry. It features in Makeover (The Emma Press, 2024). Her website is here. 

About Makeover, by Laurie Bolger
Makeover is a book dripping with nostalgia, cigarette ash and sour cream dip. Lit by too-close TV screens and too-bright calorie counters, Bolger's poems explore growing up, differing bodies and societal expectations. Writing in praise of mums, nans and sisterhood, this is a work bursting with strength, anger, love and, ultimately, hope. In a celebration of girls shaped by swimming baths and Working Men’s Clubs, friendship and family, Makeover contends with what we inherit and what we ought to pass on. 

You can read more about Makeover on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read a sample poem from the collection. 

From Makeover

Stand Together Nicely, Girls

On a stranger’s front steps

you tell me to hold on 

while you sort your hair out,

and to make sure I get the bridge in the background.

I feel like our Mum 

when we were small, 

that one of us two 

stood on our front porch 

in new school uniforms, 

matching grey jumpers

on top of little girl vests, 

or that one of us on Halloween,

you holding out a cauldron 

in plastic witch’s fingers

me dressed as the Phantom of the Opera 

in a bin bag and wonky mask,

or us in the pink bath 

with bubbles on our heads

or matching hats at weddings 

or on the top deck of ferries 

all foreheads and frowns 

or in my graduation gown 

or matching fringes and wigs 

us two dressed as clowns,

or in the beach bar red-faced,

our hair braided like snakes,

or at the Christmas table

in our best clothes,

or you on long car journeys,

mouth open against the window.

On the plane home

I want to wake you up,

tell you that the view is magic,

all those little lights —

rows of humans lean over 

to get a photo out the window.

I take one to show you

I take one for my screensaver

I take one to show our Nan — 

who’s never seen the earth from here.