Wednesday, 20 August 2025

Ruby Speechley, "Someone Else's Baby"

 


Ruby Speechley is a bestselling psychological thriller writer, whose titles include Missing, Gone, Guilty, and The Uninvited Guest. Her debut, Someone Else's Baby, was re-published by Boldwood Books in July 2025. Stolen will be her ninth novel, out in November 2025. Known for their twisty plots, relatable characters and gripping suspense, Ruby's books explore domestic issues involving trust, secrets, confessions, parenting and betrayal, alongside crimes such as abduction, blackmail, online surveillance, social media danger and murder. Born in Lisbon, Portugal, Ruby came to the UK as a baby and was raised here by her English father and Portuguese mother. She moved to Cheshire during lockdown in 2020 with her husband and two of her three children (and two Springer spaniels) to be near her eldest son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren. You can contact her on X: @rubyspeechley, Facebook: Ruby Speechley Author, Instagram: rubyjtspeechley, Blue Sky: rubyspeechley.bsky.social.




About Someone Else's Baby, by Ruby Speechley
She gave away her children. Now she wants them back.

Charlotte Morgan knows how it feels to desperately want a baby. As a child, seeing her mum devastated by losing her longed-for babies, Charlotte wished another woman could give her mother what she so craved.

Now Charlotte's a mum herself, and knowing how much love her daughter, Alice, brings into her life, she vows to help others achieve their dreams of becoming a parent.

When she meets Malcolm and Brenda on a surrogacy website, it seems that she's found the perfect couple. In their late forties, they have wealth and a enviable life, but there's just one thing missing: a child of their own.

When Charlotte falls pregnant with twins, the couple are overjoyed. And while Charlotte's heart breaks as she hands them over, her reward is knowing how much happiness the two tiny babies are going to bring into their life.

But are Malcolm and Brenda all they seem? As secrets become unravelled, Charlotte is forced to face that she has handed her babies over to virtual strangers. And when Malcolm and Brenda disappear without a trace, Charlotte is plunged into a frantic search for the babies she carried - before it's too late ...

You can read more about Someone Else's Baby on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an extract from the novel. 


From Someone Else's Baby

Prologue

She’s running as hard as she can on this cold blustery night, gasping and coughing, straining to breathe. No coat or jumper, only a torn summer dress and canvas shoes with not enough grip so she slips and stumbles towards the edge of the cliff. The black water shimmers hungrily, thundering over the pebbles as the sea comes in, rattling them like a thousand bones as it draws out again.

You call to her over and over, but she doesn’t stop, doesn’t look back because she knows you’re catching her up. And when you do, you thrust your fist into her back. She falls into the night, her screams echoing around you. The thud of her landing on cold, solid rocks makes you shut your eyes for a second.

A light illuminates the tiny sunroom of a cottage down on the beach. Someone is standing at the window, watching you run away.

Sunday, 17 August 2025

Jayne Stanton, "Have they marked you with arrows?"

 


Jayne Stanton’s poems have appeared in print and online at Anthropocene, Ink, Sweat & Tears, London Grip, Pennine Platform, Skylight 47, The Amphibian, Under the Radar and other print and online magazines and anthologies. Her first pamphlet, Beyond the Tune, was published by Soundswrite Press in 2014. She has written commissions for a county museum, University of Leicester’s Centre for New Writing, UoL poems for International Women’s Day 2018, and a city residency. Jayne runs Soundswrite, an East Midlands network for women who are enthusiastic about all aspects of poetry. Her latest pamphlet, Have they marked you with arrows?, is newly published by Poetry Space. 



 

About Have they marked you with arrows?, by Jayne Stanton
This strongly narrative and deeply personal body of work is the poet's creative response to living with uncertainty following her diagnosis and treatment for primary breast cancer. The poems give voice to the cancer patient's lived experience and its psychological and emotional legacy. 

The opening poem is a swift dispensing with the "journey" word, though a journey this undoubtedly is. The poems are unapologetic in their honesty, defiant in their asking of questions to which there are no easy answers, and naming and shaming those oft-pedalled platitudes. Hope is to be found waiting in the wings, still learning its lines when it takes the stage.

You can read more about Have they marked you with arrows? on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read two sample poems from the collection. 


From Have they marked you with arrows?

Many-feathered 

Hope is a scalpel in a steady hand.
There’s a point, somewhere
along an incision from axilla to areola

where Hope (who doesn’t know the lyrics) 
starts humming the tune on a loop.

The patient is too far under 
to appreciate the sentiment.

Hope is an evicted ductal carcinoma, 
the rose that grows 
in a pathologist’s petri dish.

Hope has clear margins. 
To what’s left, it delivers
high-energy beams from a linear accelerator.




Thursday, 14 August 2025

Ten Things Worth Knowing about the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester




Here are a few things you might want to know about our acclaimed MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester

1. You can find information about the course and apply for it online here. If you want more detailed information, or to talk about the course, email Jonathan Taylor on jt265@le.ac.uk. We're happy to answer any questions you might have! As regards entrance requirements, we ask for EITHER a first degree in a relevant subject OR significant writing experience (which we can discuss in advance). We have students from a huge range of different academic and literary backgrounds. You don't need to have studied Creative Writing as a university subject prior to applying. Mature students are very welcome.

2. As a creatively and intellectually challenging course, the MA will encourage you to experiment across forms and genres. It covers all the major forms, including prose fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry and script-writing. There are dedicated strands on fiction and poetry, so everyone will write some fiction and poetry during the MA. This is because you learn about key aspects of craft by experimenting in these forms which apply across all kinds of writing. There are also thematised strands, which cross between forms and genres (see below). Within certain parameters, you can choose what form you want to submit for assignments. So the MA aims to strike a balance between encouraging you to experiment, on the one hand, and allowing you (gradually) to specialise, on the other. Students on the MA have written poetry, short fiction, longer-form fiction, prose poetry, screenplays, radio dramas, theatre scripts, memoir, creative non-fiction, fantasy, science fiction, romantic comedies, stand-up ... and lots more. 

3. The MA deals with all aspects of this fascinating subject, moving between craft-based skills, research and academic skills and vocationality. Of course, in practice these things overlap, but the modules are designed to cover different key aspects of the subject: EN 7040 Research Methods in Creative Writing with the academic and research-based elements of Creative Writing (e.g. where ideas might come from, etc.); EN 7042 Applications with the professional and vocational aspects of the subject (e.g. publishing, performance, editing); EN 7041 Styles and EN 7043 Substances with the craft and workshop-based aspects (including writing poetry and prose fiction, alongside trans-generic themes, such as "Memory," "Time," "Life / Climate / Writing," "Space" - the themes vary each year); and finally the module EN 7044 Dissertation in Creative Writing gives you the time and space to specialise in your own chosen area. 

4. If you are doing the full-time course, you will take two modules per semester, and then the final dissertation from May to mid-September. If you are take the part-time route, you will do one module per semester over two years, and then the dissertation in the second year, ending mid-September. You can see term dates here

5. All MA Creative Writing students are provided with a personal tutor and, for the final Dissertation in Creative Writing, an individual supervisor who will guide you through the process and meet with you regularly. 

6. You receive detailed and helpful feedback on your work throughout the course from both tutors and fellow students. The MA is a supportive community of writers. 

7. Seminars generally consist of various elements, including discussion of specific themes and reading, writing exercises, feedback and workshopping. 

8. The very basic contact time is 2 hours a week during term time for each module. This means that, if you are full-time, basic contact time is 4 hours a week, if part-time, 2 hours per week. On top of this, there are all sorts of other things going on round the course, including guest lectures by visiting writers and writing professionals, performances, readings, Literary Leicester Festival, and so on. You will also meet regularly with your personal tutor. 

9. On the MA, you will be part of a vibrant wider community of writers and the Centre for New Writing at the University of Leicester. This community includes undergraduate and postgraduate students, graduates, staff, along with writers and writing professionals from across the UK and beyond. We run two blogs - Creative Writing at Leicester and our popular book review blog Everybody's Reviewing. Students regularly contribute to both. You can also join our big Facebook group, Creative Writing at Leicester University, which features news, writing opportunities, jobs, and calls for submissions. For a sense of some of the fantastic things our students and graduates have achieved, have a look at our regular News posts on this blog. 

10. The MA is taught by experienced writers and academics, including Kit de WaalZalfa Feghali, Felicity James, Jonathan Taylor and Harry Whitehead. Every year, we also programme a series of guest speakers from the professional writing world, who come in to talk about their own experiences in (for instance) publishing, writing, teaching, journalism, agency, etc.

Do let us know if you want to know more! Email jt265@le.ac.uk if you have any questions. 


Wednesday, 13 August 2025

Jo Bell, "Boater: A Life on England's Waterways"


Jo Bell, photo by Lee Allen


Jo Bell is an award-winning poet, writer, and archaeologist whose collections include Kith and Navigation. She was the UK's inaugural Canal Laureate and is a former director of National Poetry Day. Originally from Sheffield and raised on the edges of the Derbyshire Peak District, she has spent the past twenty years living a life afloat on the waterways of England. She can usually be found on a mooring somewhere in Cheshire. Boater is her first memoir.



About Boater, by Jo Bell
After decades of calm aboard England’s historic canals, a turbulent relationship finds Jo Bell embark on a year-long odyssey navigating the country’s canals. Exploring the past and present, Boater is both her story and the story of the living waterways – told with wit, wisdom, and deep insight into a culture found on the other side of the map.

In this beautifully crafted memoir, Jo uses her experience as an archaeologist to guide readers through this floating world. Along the way, there is heartbreak, disaster, a particularly grisly episode involving a Canada goose, biscuits, and an array of unforgettable and curious
characters.

She also highlights the importance of key historical figures who shaped the system we know today – James Brindley, Thomas Telford, L. T. C. Rolt – whose groundbreaking work revolutionised and revitalised transportation in England.

You can read more about Boater on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the memoir. 


From Boater
This is an adventure story. The adventure is a small one, and the country in which it happens is not on the usual map, because the place where I live is not on your map. It sits inside a parallel geography, on a map-within-a-map of England and Wales. It requires you to look differently at the land you live in. Its history, too, is a history-within-a-history; a rival to the chronicles of great men whose monuments are columns, and whose homes were themselves monuments. This watery nation is an idiosyncratic country, which inspires a love of place without nationalism.

Its people include ordinary workers, clowns, freaks, and charlatans. All share a sense of self, time, and purpose, which makes their world different to the one that lies ten feet away, beyond the water’s edge. I have not crossed the Atlantic in a dinghy with nothing but a jar of peanut butter and a waterproof hat. I have not scaled Everest, or rescued a friend from a crevasse by cutting off my own leg. But then, adventure is not a question of scale. What I have done is travel the waterways of England (and sometimes Wales) for twenty years, meeting with extraordinary people in an extraordinary environment. I have learned a lot about human nature, including my own; about rope, and Brasso, and bravery; and above all, about the necessity for a constant supply of biscuits.


Monday, 11 August 2025

Summer News 2025

Our last News post was back in April. You can read it here. Since then, lots has been happening in the Centre for New Writing in the University of Leicester, so here is an update on student and staff news. Congratulations and thanks to everyone who helps make this such a vibrant place to be!

 


General News from the Centre for New Writing

Above all, we're sad to announce that Nick Everett, Associate Professor of American Literature and Creative Writing, has now taken early retirement from the University. Nick has worked at the University of Leicester for thirty-four years. He has been the cornerstone of Creative Writing, and its founder as a subject here. He introduced the original MA options in Creative Writing, undergraduate modules, and the PhD programme. His contribution to the University and to students over the years has been immeasurable. It goes without saying that he will be hugely missed by students, graduates and staff alike. He will continue as an Honorary Fellow at the University. He will also be continuing his work as co-editor of the hugely successful New Walk Editions. Thank you for everything, Nick!

Our acclaimed MA in Creative Writing is still open for late applications for October 2025. You can find information and apply here. For more detailed information, or to talk about the course, email Jonathan Taylor on jt265@le.ac.uk. 

This blog, Creative Writing at Leicester, has recently passed 450,000 readers, while our review blog, Everybody's Reviewing, has now had over 700,000 readers. Thank you to everyone - reviewers, readers, editors, authors, interviewers, interviewees - involved!

The Centre for New Writing, in conjunction with Everybody's Reviewing, recently ran its first ever student Book Review Competition. The competition was open to all undergraduate and postgraduate students in the School of Arts, Media & Communication at the University of Leicester. Congratulations to all the winning entries, from Lee Wright (1st prize), Mellissa Flowerdew-Clarke (runner-up), Iain Minney (runner-up), Wiktoria Borkowska (honourable mention), Kathy Hoyle (honourable mention), and Kimaya Patil (honourable mention). You can read more about the competition here


Student and Staff News

Congratulations to PhD Creative Writing student Joe Bedford, who passed his viva in June! Joe has also had a short story published in issue 3 of Ragaire Magazine, available here.  

Congratulations to PhD Creative Writing student Laura Besley, whose new collection, sum of her PARTS, has just been published by V. Press. You can read more about it here. Laura's story "The Tilting World of Lotte Janssen" won Morgen Bailey's May 50-Word Short Story Competition, and her story "Playing at Dinner for Two" won the April Competition. You can read the stories here and here. Her story, "It's All So Unexpected," won second prize in the 500 Flash Fiction competition. You can read it here. Laura was also shortlisted for the prestigious Scratch Books Short Story Competition. You can read her story, "Every Winter Solstice," here



Congratulations to Constantine, MA Creative Writing graduate, whose new book, Alien Boy: Wasteland (sequel to Alien Boy) has been published by Coalville CAN Community Publishing. Read more here



Congratulations to MA Creative Writing graduate Sam Dawson whose story "Set in Stone" was published in the inaugural issue of The Bournemouth Journal. His story "Statues" has also been published by Crow & Cross Keys. You can read it here. He originally drafted both stories during his MA. 

Congratulations to Kit de Waal, Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Leicester, on the publication of her new novel, The Best of Everything. You can read more about the novel hereKit was Chair of Judges for The Women's Prize for Fiction 2025. There is a video of the awards here, and more information on The Women's Prize website here. She was on BBC R4 Bookclub talking about My Name is Leon - available on BBC Sounds here. Kit has also become Ambassador of the charity Bookbanks. You can find more information on the charity's website here.

New Walk Editions, which is co-edited by Nick Everett, Associate Professor of American Literature and Creative Writing, published two new pamphlets in June: D. A. Prince’s Continuous Present and Richie McCaffery’s Skail. You can see more details on New Walk Editions' website here.

Congratulations to MA Creative Writing graduate Tracey Foster, who is guest poet on Mad Swirl here. Tracey has written a review for Everybody's Reviewing of Spring Cannot Be Cancelled, by Martin Gayford, here.

Congratulations to new PhD Creative Writing student Cathy Galvin, whose poetry collection Ethnology will be published by Bloodaxe Books in 2026. You can read more here



Congratulations to PhD Creative Writing student Beth Gaylard, who passed her PhD viva in June!

Congratulations to PhD Creative Writing student Kathy Hoyle, whose story "A Diner Full of Nothing'" is published by FlashFood here

Sabyn Javeri, PhD Creative Writing graduate, gave a public talk at Newcastle City Library with the NMC (North Modern and Contemporary Network), on the personal challenges of writing, on Thursday 3rd July.

Creative Writing student Grace Klemperer won both this year's G. S. Fraser Prize (for best undergraduate poetry submission) and the John Coleman Prize (for best undergraduate non-poetry submission). Honourable mentions for the G. S. Fraser Prize were given to Mahnoor Raja and Keeley Zappia. An honourable for the John Coleman Prize was given to Sarah Moritz. Congratulations to all!

The Strange History of Samuel Pepys's Diary by Kate Loveman, Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture, was recently published by Cambridge University Press. You can read more about it here



Congratulations to Creative Writing student Dave Marston, whose poem "They" is published in a new anthology Salt in the Wound, published by Underland Review. You can read more here

Amirah Mohiddin, PhD Creative Writing graduate, has written a review of Birdy Arbuthnot's Year of "Yes" by Joanna Nadin for Everybody's Reviewing here

Sally Shaw, MA Creative Writing graduate, has written a review of The Two Keisukes by Brian Howell for Everybody's Reviewing here

PhD Creative Writing graduate, Hannah Stevens, has been interviewed about her writing for Pukaar Magazine. You can read the article here

Congratulations to Karen Stevens, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Chichester University and also our External Examiner for the MA in Creative Writing (2020-2024), whose short story collection, Brilliant Blue, has been published by Barbican Press. You can read more about it here

Shauna Strathmann and Anna Walsh, MA Creative Writing students, recently performed at Leicester Quaker Meeting House as part of a series of "Green Talks." The event, which took place in June, was entitled "Changeable" and involved a poetry reading and discussion about Creative Writing and the climate crisis. 

Jonathan Taylor, Associate Professor of Creative Writing, won the Arnold Bennett Prize for his book of short stories, Scablands and Other Stories, in May. The prize is awarded bi-annually by the Arnold Bennett Society to the author of a book with connections to North Staffordshire. Jonathan's memoir, A Physical Education, was also longlisted for the award. You can read more about the award here and on the Society's website here. Jonathan's article, "Arnold Bennett, Stoke and Me," is on Chainlink Magazine here. In July, Jonathan was writer in residence for the day in Trentham Library, Stoke-on-Trent, as part of a project to mark 100 years of Stoke-on-Trent as a city. You can read more about the project here. Jonathan has also written reviews for The Times Literary Supplement here and The Morning Star here. His story "Bubble Man" was published in The Morning Star, and you can read it here

Paul Taylor-McCartney, PhD Creative Writing graduate, has written a review of Brilliant Blue by Karen Stevens, for Everybody's Reviewing here. He also reviewed raw content by Naomi Booth here. A short fiction title, "Twelve Stories for Twelve Sections," that Paul commissioned, co-edited, published and launched as a collaboration between Hermitage Press and Cornwall National Landscape was a first place winner at the prestigious Holyer an Gof Publishers’ Awards in July. Paul has also been busy promoting his children's novel, Sisters of the Pentacle, at various bookshops and retailers around Cornwall, having completed a draft of the second book in the series.



Nina Walker, PhD student, has written a review of sum of her PARTS by Laura Besley for Everybody's Reviewing here

Harry Whitehead, Associate Professor of Creative Writing, recently returned from a month's artist residency with the Ladakh Arts and Media Organisation (LAMO) in Ladakh, India. He was there to research and write his next novel, about a film crew coming unstuck while shooting a tyre advert in the Himalayas. While he was in Ladakh, he also gave a series of workshops and talks about Creative Writing. Harry's new novel, White Road, will be published in September by Claret Press. He will be launching the novel at the University of Leicester on Wednesday 1 October, 5.30pm-6.30pm, in the David Wilson Library. All are welcome, and details are here. Harry also wrote a review of Syllables of the Briny World by Georgina Key for Everybody's Reviewing here


Harry with the LAMO team in Ladakh, India


Congratulations to MA Creative Writing graduate Lisa Williams, whose story, "Dad's Shed," was published in the new issue of Blink Ink Magazine

As well as winning first prize in our book review competition (see above), PhD Creative Writing student Lee Wright has written a review of On Writers and Writing by Henry James for Everybody's Reviewing here


Friday, 8 August 2025

Alison Brackenbury, "Village"

 



Alison Brackenbury, born in Lincolnshire in 1953, is descended from long lines of servants and skilled farmworkers. She has published ten collections of poetry, most recently Thorpeness (Carcanet, 2022) and Gallop, her Selected Poems (Carcanet, 2019). Her work has won an Eric Gregory Award and a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors. The programmes she has written and narrated for BBC Radio 4 have been frequently been "Choices" in Radio Times, which praised her account of village life: "evocative, amusing and utterly compelling." After she left the village, Alison’s life ranged from a First-Class Oxford degree to industrial work. Memory, experience and the startling results of research have enriched Village, her brand-new, non-fiction prose book, honouring her Lincolnshire home. Alison’s writing about her village has recently been featured in The Guardian, The Telegraph, and The Financial Times, and discussed on The Verb on BBC Radio 4. Village has just been published in both digital and paperback forms. Alison's website is here




About Village, by Alison Brackenbury
Witches and wheelbarrows ...

Francis Weatherhogg, saddler and Census taker, had one special form to deliver. To a "witch" ... Under the shifting shadows of the walnut tree, Mary Ann opened the door of her tiny stone cottage. There she lived, unmarried, with a man whose extraordinary story spanned three continents. And Mary Ann herself – in 1891! – was still feared in her village for murderous "spells" ...

Village tells extraordinary stories of six homes, from 1841, when the first Census taker trudged up steep Hollowgate Hill, to 1971, when its author, aged 18, was driven below its thorn trees to Oxford. But she never forgot her village: Vicarage Road where Amy Mary, her grandmother, gleefully spoke of her rebellious survival of "service"; tall Rose Cottage, up "Long Lane," where Mrs Rudkin, pioneering archaeologist, brought the past to life for village children; the Mount, the farmhouse where the author’s family camped in a few grand rooms, and the mysterious cold Manor on its limestone ridge, "the Cliff" ...

The author’s memories began with cheerfulness. Her research revealed what women survived: especially abandoned, pregnant girls, struggling "Singlewomen," including Amy Mary’s own tiny, gallant sister. Yet it was in the finest houses that young wives in farming’s "Golden Age" crashed and burned.
 
And how did old Emma Jarman survive into her 80s, despite her Saturday night sessions in the Commercial Inn? She had her lift home booked with Mr Weatherhogg. In a wheelbarrow ...

You can read more about Village here. Below, you can read a short excerpt from the book. 


From Village

What the travelling woman saw

December, 1854. A hard winter in Lincolnshire. The lane-side trees, at the village edge, are caves of white above the dark figure, bundled in shawls. She has seen many things in her calls at cottages. But never before a woman on fire ...

Beneath the bare, grey-barked arms of a young walnut tree, the cottage is tiny. Hawking or begging to survive, it is in the smallest homes she may find villagers as kind as my grandmothers will be: superstitious Amy Mary, who buys lucky tokens, or tiny, benevolent Dot, the shepherd’s wife, who gives workless men a thick slice of bread and butter, and a brief, safe place by the fire.

No answer to her knock. But through the window’s thick glass, she glimpses a dangerous light. Glinting flames lick the long skirts of a woman, crumpled on the rug. Is the traveller afraid that the villagers will call her a thief? She rushes across the lane. She shrieks to Mary Herrick.

Does Mary stamp on the creeping hems of flame? Married to a "Cottager," who farms a few acres, she can afford stout boots, stitched by John Barratt, the village shoemaker. But her middle-aged neighbour has not survived. Her fall overturned a tub. She has suffocated in a pale flood of what the Coroner and The Lincolnshire Chronicle will mysteriously call "Paste."

Blue, huge, the sky sinks. Down the lane, a young girl dawdles, carrying a tired child, returning, reluctantly, from the excitement of a village wedding.

Friday, 1 August 2025

Christine Hammond, "Sojourn: Moments in Poetry"

 


Christine Hammond began writing poetry whilst studying English Literature at Queen’s University, Belfast. Her early poems were published in The Gown (QUB) and Women’s News where, as one of the original members she also wrote Arts Reviews and had work published in Spare Rib. She returned to writing after a long absence and her poetry has been featured in a variety of anthologies including The Poet’s Place and Movement (Poetry in Motion – The Community Arts Partnership), The Sea (Rebel Poetry Ireland), all four editions of Washing Windows and Her Other Language (Arlen House) and literary journal The Honest Ulsterman. She has also been a reader at Purely Poetry - Open Mic Night, Belfast.

Her collection Sojourn: Moments in Poetry has just been published in both digital and paperback forms.



About Sojourn: Moments in Poetry, by Christine Hammond 
Stylistically concise and visually vivid, this collection invites the reader into a reflective space – one filled with poetic resonance, yet open to individual interpretation. Whether inspired by real life, fictional construct or social observation, the poems in Sojourn flow with a deliberate rhythm that mirrors the title’s essence: a journey through moments that shape and define us. All are skilfully observed and articulated, frequently using the descriptive lens of nature and the natural order as a mechanism to contextualise, interpret and seek spiritual understanding. 

You can read more about Sojourn here. Below, you can read two sample poems from the collection. 


From Sojourn: Moments in Poetry

Flight Path
 
         Upwash to Strangford

Long and languid
the dark nights hang
heavy as a cloak 
festooned by Ursa Major

in the lane bats squeak, cats screech
a river runs tidal
and the moon’s soft filament flickers
dying to sunrise

slowly, the wild geese appear
a prelude of eager starts, then
more and more
join to shape the sacred apex

faith in formation
divine travellers lining the sky 
calling their sojourn across the dawn
gifting light from a slipstream 


Ritual

First, the ting-clang comforting din
of companion set with shovel
tuned to the scrape of grate and bucket then
fold, roll, wrap, tie, tuck it with sticks, with coal

till the glow of broadsheet rosettes
cast a news flash for the era
and headlines despatched themselves 
from the hearth

immaculate hearth of the fire altar
lit by my mother, high priestess of the house
who, standing back decreed
that coal’s more like slack, must speak to the coalman