Poem of the Week

An Extract from Bhanu Kapil’s 2020 Prize-winning ‘How to Wash a Heart’

A poem from last year’s winner, Bhanu Kapil – an extract from How to Wash a Heart, published by Pavilion Poetry

from How to Wash a Heart

Like this?
It’s inky-early outside and I’m wearing my knitted scarf, like
John Betjeman, poet of the British past.
I like to go outside straight away and stand in the brisk air.
Yesterday, you vanished into those snowflakes like the ragged beast
You are.
Perhaps I can write here again.
A “fleeting sense of possibility.” – K.
Keywords: Hospitality, stars, jasmine,
Privacy.
you made a space for me in your home, for my books and clothes,
and I’ll
Never forget that.
When your adopted daughter, an “Asian refugee”
As you described her,
Came in with her coffee and perched on the end
Of my cot, I felt so happy.
And less like a hoax.
Showed her how to drink water
From the bowls
On the windowsill.

Poem of the Week

Poem of the week this week comes from Arundhathi Subramaniam’s When God is a Traveller, published by Bloodaxe. When God is a Traveller was shortlisted for the 2014 T. S. Eliot Prize. You can hear Arundathi reading from her collection here.

‘Quick-fix Memos for Difficult Days’

1

Clear
clothes, pillows, books, letters
of the germs of need –
the need to have things mean
more than they do.

Claim verticality.

2

Trust only the words that begin
their patter
in the rain-shadow valley
of the mind.

3

Some nights
you’ve seen
enough earth
and sky
for one lifetime

but know you still have unfinished business with both.

Poem of the Week

Poem of the week this week comes from Kevin Powers’ Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting, published by Sceptre. Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting was shortlisted for the 2014 T. S. Eliot Prize. You can hear a reading from his collection here.

‘Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting’

I tell her I love her like not killing
or ten minutes of sleep
beneath the low rooftop wall
on which my rifle rests.

I tell her in a letter that will stink,
when she opens it,
of bolt oil and burned powder
and the things it says.

I tell her how Private Bartle says, offhand,
that war is just us
making little pieces of metal
pass through each other.