Primers Volume Four

Lewis Buxton, Amelia Loulli, Victoria Richards, Jane Commane, Kim Moore

• Publisher: Nine Arches Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781911027775
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Poesia

In 2018, the Poetry School and Nine Arches Press launched their nationwide Primers scheme for a fourth time, in search of exciting new voices in poetry, with Kim Moore and Jane Commane as selecting editors. After reading through hundreds of anonymous entries, and narrowing down the choices from longlist to shortlist, three poets emerged as clear choices: Lewis Buxton, Amelia Loulli and Victoria Richards.

Primers: Volume Four now collects together a showcase from each of the three new poets It is an irresistible invitation to step out of ourselves and our bodies and drop your expectations on the dancefloor, to take the plunge on the rollercoaster-ride of grief, motherhood and new life, and to meet desire in all its outrageous, dazzling and joyous forms. Secrets, disclosures, changed names and brilliant disguises make for a vivid, adventurous and often deeply moving selection of new work from some of poetry's most talented emerging voices.

Praise for Primers: Volume Four

"All three poets are rooted in the territory of the body and the expectations placed on it by society though their concerns range widely – from an examination of toxic masculinity to female desire and motherhood. Their approach to language and form is varied, but what is consistent is their ability as poets to invite the reader to see the world in a different way." – Kim Moore

Amelia Loulli

Amelia Loulli is a writer and actor living in Cumbria. Her poetry has been twice shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, awarded second place in the Battered Moons Poetry Competition and longlisted for the London Magazine Poetry Prize. A member of the Kendal Brewery Poets, she was also shortlisted for Primers: Volume Three.

Rock-a-bye Baby

Once, my sister died, and Mum and Dad

were swapped

with players who pretended that food

could still be swallowed, and nights were still

for sleeping

and only the way they said my name, as though

its syllables were wrong, as though it ended

the wrong way

could prove what I knew: none of them

were coming back.

What happened to her body is

they burned it

on a bonfire, like when the Guy gets scorched

every black November. I had to stay behind, still

very much alive

and arrange myself small among the sofa cushions

trying to hide, hoping I might trick them and they would

come home,

tired and smelling of charcoal.

Afterwards, nothing was said

of her toes,

how small they must have been inside a box that big. I imagined

they would have counted them, a habit is a habit after all,

this little piggy

so still, and never tickled, and they never once forgot

to buy cereal, or to collect me from school, but sometimes

when they thought

I was sleeping, they stood together behind my bedroom door,

silent and hidden and crying in time to every nursery rhyme

I’d ever been sung…

Baby, baby, where have you gone?

baby, baby, please come home, baby, baby,

we kept the wrong one.

When I Was Little

Mum smoked the cigarettes

and Dad kept the guns

and this was the best way around

because Mum had destruction

tattooed on her breast bone and Dad

kept himself to himself.

And I weighed myself at 6pm

every Tuesday to see

what I continued to be made of

which was only ever a bit

of both of them

and too much of everything else.

And the loft housed a creature called Boris

who heard my secrets at night

and made me run fast as a bullet

up the stairs beneath his hatch

and sometimes when I sat on the loo

and bent my head to the left

I could see his fingers trying to escape.

So I closed the door but the light was broken

and the girls at school all told me

we couldn’t be friends unless I was brave.

Brave enough to stand in front

of the blackened mirror and chant

Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, thirteen times

to the wicked Queen’s face.

And once when I screamed,

Dad slapped me so hard across my cheek,

his fingers stayed there, red as menses for days,

and mum laughed like a film star

through clouds of her own smoke,

every time I told her

I was afraid.

Something in the Blood

like the inhibitor you don’t have

the inhibitor

which makes you swell

but never bruise

which has never stopped you

throwing yourself

at hard things

walls and doors

and even harder things

which show themselves

in your fists

like balloons

filled with sand

your inflated face

none of us recognise

so much more

lips and skin

than we have ever seen

and the words you spit

when Dad removes

the spoon handle

which he slides

lubricate...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• About the Selecting Editors:
• Contents
• Foreword
• Lewis Buxton
• Amelia Loulli
• Victoria Richards
• Notes and Acknowledgements
• About the author and this book