Helen T Curtis is a poet now settled in Derbyshire but with roots in the South of the country. Having escaped the London suburbs to study in Wales, she spent a good part of her life among the chalk hills of the South, and by the sea. Coast and river landscapes inform a good deal of her writing; recent work has also explored waters and weathers of the heart. Poems have been written over a time of personal joy and grief within her family, negotiating loss and new birth, as well as in excavating a long-buried personal history. Her poetry has been published in several journals including ArtemisPoetry, Dreich, The OSP Review, Indigo Dreams, Ink, Sweat and Tears and anthologies. Helen has studied widely, including gaining degrees in German and English, the latter 1st Class Hons. She has been studying with Dr Kirsten Norrie at the OSP for more than four years, which has culminated in a significant body of work: a collection, Tides, Elemental, which is due to be published by Broken Sleep Books in January 2025.
PYRE
When rage is undertow,
slack, slag-black and drag of shingle – ignite
the spoil-heap – conjure
flame
to leap, a living sea,
its roiling peaks whipped high.
Cast your curses to dance in tongues
violet, gold,
not agape, like clotted fish.
As brilliant pyres flung heroines
to bespatter night sky,
make fire, transmute bleak death,
make flame.
IN-CARCERATION
Transposed I learn again to smoke.
The only way to breathe there was to blow
hoops of me to peer through to burn away
the greasy taste of fear observe
little stacks of ash in place of gaze
take off dove grey in circled exhalation.
I breathe myself absent in this strange place
spiral away from this oval table and rise above
these strangers who I seem to know shush out molecules of me
grey white ghost white into air to not be here.
Wreaths to ride in I made us woven in atmosphere
purified in burning I learned it young
to be subsumed in cool blue shroud
scented white flake of my burning mouth eyes
little tipped piles of hate
and my self evaporated over and over in spiral writing
as though these trails of scribbled air
wove a carpet to ride away barely there
(and you refused
and the last halting breath you never took
but stopped dead one night far from home and alone
and I here waiting).
I incinerate myself white ash they left me
tiny tipping stacks of cinder each time
the fire due to ignite snuffed
at the oval table and your face and my
escape in shame and dismay of smoke.