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Lesley Curwen
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the poet
Plymouth-based poet, broadcaster, sailor and winner of the inaugural Molecules Unlimited poetry competition, Lesley Curwen writes about loss in the natural world – loss she saw inflicted by the global capitalism she used to report on. Together with Jane R Rogers and Tahmina Maula, she collaborated on the pamphlet Invisible Continents. Lesley's solo work, Recovery Attempt, will be published in 2024 by The Hedgehog Poetry Press, and she'll also publish eco-chapbook Sticky with Miles with Dreich the same year. A Wales Poetry Award finalist in 2022, Lesley has found homes for her poems with journals and publishers including Black Bough Poetry, Broken Sleep Books, After..., Atrium, Spelt Magazine, The Alchemy Spoon and Ice Floe Press.
the poems
Running free
rippled mane spits white beads
sun gifts endless diamond
flash on stippled flow
sheets pulled iron taut
a cloud-line shadows Plymouth
slides south to Spain
my boat tips and yaws
I ride her like a gaucho
rockinghorsebronco
through seas finite but giant
a cornflowerblue bling robe
to cool a planet
my boat and I plough through
plastic, oil slicks, submarines
shit, bodies, melted ice
fleets of sardine, shark
whale and cell-wide life in
celebration, grief, what you will
A parent never known
In the gym, mirrors meet at a dark seam
where body is apprehended but face is half
a line of flesh, a ghosting, nothing real.
Impossible to see whose breath is misting
glass. In this fashion, the unmet
father/mother is present and concealed.
The solid whole that lies beyond the join
feels close, a step away, just missed.
Faceless, the kin we lost and lose again.
Ocean City
We are on the edge of the world.
Always the draw of water’s tinselled margin,
urgent roar.
Tattered pigeons bleach bronze heads of mariners who left
Mayflower steps flush with gold and hard tack.
Spattered eyes look to ocean’s light
its crooning, sweet unknown.
Monuments to the infinite spivvery of seizing new worlds
not new to inhabitants
not worlds at all
same planet, same air, same cursed seas.
We are on the edge of everywhere
at stone steps beyond pasty ‘n’ fudge shops
decorated by a dozen plaques copperplate or fat capital.
A toxic pink sprayed across the globe
from here this nub and den of chancers, rogues astride
their wooden barkys aching to leap over the
edge.
It is not the ocean’s fault. It skitters in morning sun
without intent, tides swung by moon’s slide
at gravity’s dictate.
Blameless it sighs, waves rainbow-flashed
by diesel meniscus sucking at particled air.
No launches now from Mayflower steps
though exploits persist.
Three frigates anchored in the Sound,
tankers hauling fossil juice, dark fin
of nuclear sub.
A multi-storied cruise ship squats the bay
its orange shiplets bound for pirate shops.
The ocean is not
what it was.
Neoprene swimmers lash arms through green soup
herbed with heavy metals from dead mines
fine solution of faeces from overflows
swarms of plastic iotas
rinsed and smashed by diurnal tides.
In the dusty Minster clouds of purple fish swim sunlit glass.
A creation window hurls scarlet atoms
on cobalt sea.
Harbourside, loud horns call. Another vessel docks in Plymouth’s
endless back-and-forth.
The swell licks iron ring in weathered stone,
blurs a rusty edge.
Publishing credits
Running Free: Invisible Continents (Nine Pens Press)
A parent never known / Ocean City:
exclusive first publication by iamb
