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Pratibha Castle
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the poet
Much of Pratibha Castle's poetry reflects on her childhood growing up in England in the 1950s and 60s as the daughter of working-class Irish parents. Her poetry has been published in Under the Radar, Lighthouse, Southword, The Honest Ulsterman, Tears in the Fence, One Hand Clapping, Words for the Wild and elsewhere. Pratibha followed her award-winning debut pamphlet A Triptych of Birds & A Few Loose Feathers with Miniskirts in The Waste Land – a winter 2023 Poetry Book Society selection. In 2025, she was a finalist in the Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition, highly commended in the McLellan English Poetry Competition, and shortlisted for The Fish Poetry Prize.
the poems
Loving
A convention of china dolls / on a shelf beside the window / heartless as Delft /neat feet / bound in black bombazine / poking out / beneath satin strict skirts / thoughts / tight lipped / behind pink-pout smirks / corpsed eyes / promise little / of warmth / though a child / frowning over fractions / under Sister Brendan’s codfish glare might / ache / to gussy tresses / chestnut arctic gold liquorice gloss curls to / cosset / covet / coil / about a mayfly finger / dream of ice-tulip cheeks / lace edged pantaloons / frothy petticoats of / cradling chilly porcelain into her chest / contrite enough / to birth a purple bloom / hopeful / to blush chalky skin / for crockery eyes to weep / cherry blossom petals
The New Neighbour
Introduces Himself
holds out his hand
and though cat sense
cautions do not touch
I freeze. That same cat
caught grubbing
in a bed of broccoli,
that leveret
on Windmill Hill,
thralled in enchantment
of a ferret. My throat
seizes so I cannot utter
handshakes not my thing.
Puppet to his will
jerking its string, my arm
lifts, hand – crushed
in his – flaccid
as a bludgeoned fish.
I snap
out of this trance,
mumble must get dinner
stumble to the house
scrub passive fingers
to a laundry girl flush,
purge the clammy imprint
of his intuited intent.
One more blot
to bloat the image
of a boy’s tobacco
touch improvising
on my ten
year old fanny
as if it was a junk
yard flute.
Hug
My mother’s heart was a lake, its frozen surface
cracked, when I was young,
with insults hurled her way,
and I hurled many, wounding
like rocks, till her cool glaze
became a starburst
of splintered love.
Even her delight in daffodils,
withered, since the bunch of yellow bells
she gave me on my 15th birthday,
whose whole heads I bit off, mad
for some imagined slight and
in an acid spritz of blame,
spat her way.
At which my mother,
murmuring
to herself,
sure the poor girl’s tired,
patted my arm,
our only
physical exchange:
we never hugged.
Having learnt, years later,
how an infant monkey languishes
if deprived of its mother’s touch,
I subjected her to a lingering clinch.
Not just a brief ooh-la-la
peck
on either cheek,
stay two feet away
from-one-another sort of hug, but
a bellytobelly chesttochest squeeze,
palming up and down her back
as though grooming the silk-eyed Persian
hunkered on the couch, glaring.
On a normal day, the only
flesh my mother or myself
would handle. And
when my mother tried to edge away,
I fastened my grip
like now
I’ve got you ma,
you’re going
nowhere.
The way, when small,
I ached for her to hold me,
limpet tight.
Publishing credits
Loving: Stand Magazine (Vol. 21 No. 4) – originally appeared in a different form titled A Child's Dream of Love
The New Neighbour Introduces Himself: finalist in the McLellan Poetry Competition 2025
Hug: London Grip (Winter 2021)