Catherine Ayres, "Janus"

Catherine Ayres is a teacher and poet from Alnwick in Northumberland. Her first collection, Amazon, was published by Indigo Dreams in 2016. She is widely published both in print and online. She has recently completed a Creative Writing PhD at Northumbria University, focusing on women living on Hadrian's Wall at the time of Roman occupation. She studied English Literature at the University of Leicester 1991-1994.

About Janus, by Catherine Ayres
Slipping through time over the course of a calendar year, the poems in Janus, like the two-headed Roman god, look both forward and back, charting the significant moments in an ordinary life. This collection is an exploration of those memories which "make circles / glint like birds in the light."

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

From Janus 

June 1983 - a weekend playing out with my best friend Emma

Oddbods

We embroider our edges with slow smiles,
tuck ourselves into home-made jumpers
and hide in our mothers’ expectations.
We are happiest in the avocado shadow of bathrooms,
turning over sea urchins with trembling hands;
or crouched next to French windows, listening
to a scratched recording of birdsong.
Our guinea pigs are called Monica - they are both boys.
We like our eggs hard boiled, our celery lined with salt.
We know how to use a soup spoon.
We do not understand posters; all our clippings
are pinned to floral wallpaper. Our bedrooms
are like conches, delicate and full of whispers.
(It is often hard to leave them).
Laughter clatters round us like knives falling in another room;
we are soft and solemn as Sundays and do not flinch.
One day we will live in the tree on the hill,
hang our horse brasses from its branches.
When our dandelion clocks swim like spiders
towards the moon, we will teach the teddies about Jesus,
serenade the cowpats with our favourite hymns.
It won’t matter that our dollies are lonely;
we will draw them close, wipe the tears
from their large, unblinking eyes.

April 2020 - lockdown

Mum

When I crunch down your drive
with some carrots, a wholemeal loaf -
unsliced – you stand in the garage
and use the remote to tilt its door

emerging slowly, feet first,
like a breech birth, or Darth Vader,
if Darth Vader wore Skechers, a John Lewis
top. For a moment, your face floats

then you step forward, submissive,
as if these groceries were the Host,
and I step back, as if your eyes
were metre rules. We’re silent,

ceremonious, a bit pissed off. Mum,
we’re more alike than I let on.
Behind you, in the kitchen,
there’s an awkward hug. Cheese scones.

Vic Pickup, "The Omniscient Tooth Fairy"

Vic Pickup is the author of Lost & Found (Hedgehog Press, 2020), What Colour is My Brain? (co-written with Jules Whiting, Hedgehog Press 2022) and The Omniscient Tooth Fairy (Indigo Dreams, 2023). She has also edited an anthology, Reading Poets, forthcoming in June 2024 from Two Rivers Press. Vic is a co-organiser of Poets Café Reading and the town’s Stanza group. Her website is here.

About The Omniscient Tooth Fairy, by Vic Pickup
The Omniscient Tooth Fairy documents the decade following the poet becoming a mother: from hospital visits and melted Easter eggs to viewing world news through new eyes. Exploring old vulnerabilities and discovering new strengths, this collection observes the daily rhythm of holding on and letting go that comes with adjusting to parenthood, and change. The poems illustrate the world in all its beguiling complexity, enticing us to both absorb and shield from it, taking what’s needed to find faith and purpose; pursuing the quest to know ourselves better.

You can read more about The Omniscient Tooth Fairy on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read two poems from the collection. 

  

From The Omniscient Tooth Fairy

Him, building me a bookcase

Sixteen chunky shelves, propped on blocks
of pallet wood, sliced like angel cakes –
each one a different shade.                         
 
A dusty finger pins the glossy pages
of a how-to book. Cautiously, he drills,
but soon his eye is fixed, unblinking.
 
The bar turns, the wood secured in its vice.                         
Lines of sinew flicker in his forearm as he saws,
then blows and smooths the debris clear.
 
He measures with one eye shut,
improvises in places where
the spirit level would not go.
 
He gives purpose to timber fit only for the fire,
a hand-me-down drill and screws
from an ice cream tub on a garage shelf.
 
Having masked the edges, he applies three coats,
wearing war paint of magnolia, the glean of cream
laden thickly on his brush.
 
We stand and my hand slides
into his back pocket, already wondering
which will go where and in what order.
 
He doesn’t know, but this is my greatest wish:
not the having of a place
or a way to keep things, only this –
 
Him, building me a bookcase.    
 
 
The longing of Judith Kerr
 
What if you could give them back
their hats, coats, scarves? Place
a knitted glove onto each small hand.
What if you could return their hair to them,
for plaiting, threading with daisy chains;
pull from the sack the toy train,
hand-carved, and old bear,
a travelling companion – exactly the one,
with a bright blue bow around his neck
frayed from too much love?
What if you could put them all back
into the right hands, find the shoes,
a perfect pair, buckle the feet, all tucked up
in woollen socks? What if you could fill
their cheeks until red and ruddy,
make rounded tums and dimpled legs,
scatter freckles on faces with the touch
of summer, then place in one gloved hand
another, bigger? What if you could give them
a mother; give them back a father too,
smiling down as button eyes look up?
What if they could hold hands and step back
on board the train, this one with red velour seats
and a warm welcome from the lady
with the trolley, who offers jelly sweets
and apples and a storybook,
about a tiger who came to tea?
 
 
Note: Judith Kerr’s Creatures (2015) is dedicated to “the one and a half million Jewish children who didn’t have my luck, and all the pictures they might have painted."