A Poem for World Poetry Day 2019

Every day is World Poetry Day in our house. I love the fact that poetry is such a big, comforting, startling thing in our lives. But today is the official World Poetry Day that only comes once a year ...

... and to mark it, I'm posting my poem 'Oystercatchers', which recently won the 2018 Plough Prize Short Poem Competition. (Still haven't quite integrated that information into my life.)

And also some photos of Uphill Slipway in Somerset, which is the landscape I had in my head when I wrote it. 

Uphill is where, according to local folklore, the boy Jesus landed with his uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, en route for Glastonbury. For me it has a deeply creative, rather more pagan resonance that feels just as divine.  

Oystercatchers

‘Aujourd’hui, maman est morte’

                           ‘L’étranger’, Albert Camus                                                                

One day

the day she’s been waiting for will come

and she’ll take these words with her to the sea

unzip her coat, pull open her ribcage

let them fly as purposely

as oystercatchers

pulling the strings of the sky

and tide

lifting the weight from each blood cell

giving her permission      

©Deborah Harvey 2019 

'Oystercatchers' is from my forthcoming collection, The Shadow Factory, which will be published by Indigo Dreams Publishing later this summer.