Derek Healy, "Children in the Window"

 

Derek Healy grew up at the foot of the Cotswolds Hills in Gloucestershire and, before a career in mental health social work, studied English Literature at St John’s College, Oxford University. However, overcoming that impediment, he has gone on to see his poetry appear in many journals, including The Road Not Taken, The Lyric, Ibbetson Street (all USA), Orbis, Snakeskin and The Cannon’s Mouth. His fourth collection of poems, Children in the Window (Graffiti Books), was published very recently (January 2026).  It follows Made Strange by Time (2018), Home (2020) and Uncharted (2022). Now a proud and far-flung member of the Ohio Poetry Association, Derek lives on the Malvern Hills with his wife Candida, where they have no children, no dogs and no cats but make do pretty well with each other and some fine friends. 

About Children in the Window, by Derek Healy

Children in the Window, Derek Healy’s fourth collection (Graffiti Books 2026), ranges far and wide, both in its themes and its styles. Sixteen sonnets are dedicated to his wife. In blank verse and free verse he contemplates the bizarre contradictions of the universe we inhabit. Cinquain stanzas take a tongue-in-cheek look at religion, whilst in 6/5 syllabics he peers into some corners which those closest to us never get to see. There is even a rarely encountered ghazanelle, discussing the fad for lovers’ padlocks weighing down bridges. Poignant, vivid, humorous and meticulously crafted, Children in the Window offers up poems to which a reader can return again and again.

You can read more about Children in the Window on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read two sample poems from the collection. 

From Children in the Window

Downhill      

At five feet ten he peaked,

but now a full half inch and more

has stooped or crumbled away;

white hair thins around a tonsure,

hands sprout spots like mould,

ears need turning towards every voice,

whilst three pairs of spectacles

mete out his sight

and names jump ship in the dark.

Yet these are the best of times:

up with the early sun

when the world lies silent,

free to fashion what he will

from words arranged on a page,

to look not out but in,

discern within himself

the glint of age-old truths

waiting his discovery;

steer his own course at last,

long years of labour behind him,

sunset ripening ahead.

The Shirtwaist Factory Fire

          (Manhattan Island, March 1911)

All ways out locked

against petty theft

or early slopings off to lovers' arms,

the girls have panicked from the flames

to this one high window

they could muscle open.

So far below

the cold dead street

lies empty for them,

the pavement thronged

as though the carnival

might be half a block away

and coming.

Names meet mid-air for one last time.

Then – as though in a moment

become mothers to each other –

one by one they take the ledge,

scramble a goodbye or prayer,

and drop, eyes heavenwards,

two hundred feet.

One final girl appears,

dark hair streaming in the wind

and swirls of smoke,

helped to the precipice

by the day's young stand-in foreman.

Briefly they fumble

a never-to-be-bettered kiss,

before he hands her out

to all eternity

as though onto a train

bound out of state,

her eyes not leaving his

until she drops.

As he follows her

his trouser legs bulge

in the upwards rushing air;

flame light, like chandeliers,

spangling his proudly polished shoes.