Watch Gillie reading some of the poems from her new pamphlet OPEN SKIES, her response to the war. Proceeds to Ukrainian Institute fundraiser to provide English lessons for those resettled in the UK. https://youtu.be/_4ta_UUVViY
Her books can be bought from Live Canon, here
Gillie’s most recent collection
Scan QR code to watch some of Gillie’s poems
they line her route
they line her route leaning against shop windows smoking in porches and doorways flipping coins and followin her passage with cartoon eyes free-falling into step beside her giggling banal invitations into her right ear left shoulder stomach tight and churning she click-clicks high-stepping low acceleration knowing haste will goad the hunters down the one-track road where they come together to trip her into rough grass old beer cans bottles lacy rags broken shoes
Image courtesy of Mary Evans Picture Library, who paired it with this poem, on their blog
swingtime for venus
if the wind rises and the waves
swell behind you
barely balanced on a shell
no sails or oars or blankets
no outboard motor or cups of cocoa
no life-jackets or rubber wings
shelter is only your hair and hands
desire gives the wind
reason to blow you onshore
with only a tease of cover
more like the movement
of a matador’s cloak
distracting you into the future
where not all rain falls as petals
First published by Alba Poetry Journal
My aunt lit a cigarette
She said: Get me out of here,
I can’t fit inside my own home,
Let’s go to the middle of the ocean.
Out there, surrounded by the deep
blue, the seabed shallows up
into a circle of turquoise.
We can walk around the edge
of the depths, lie on our backs
soak in the colours,
My aunt lit a cigarette and haggled
with the boatman who put-putted
us past curious turtles and confetti
beneath the ripples. We were alone,
three people mid-ocean, seabirds, fish.
The boat idled and I slid into liquid sky,
floated to the edge and swam beyond it.
Still in the boat, my aunt lit a cigarette.
Did you know your grandmother shot a man?
She was threatened by a mob. It was hushed up.
Casually she flicked her ash over
the bombshell and I climbed back into the boat.
When we left, the boatman gave me a conch.
It sits in my gardenstill,
the delicate pink interior dulled
by the calc of London rain.
First published in The Blue Nib