Suzannah V. Evans

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Almost-Heartwood   

The rosy almost-heartwood of larch,
which sounds like lark, which sounds like singing,
which sounds like the wood could open its rosy throat
and pour forth the song of boats sighing in the harbour,
swimming onto slipways, knocking against pontoons

The grainy planks of teak,
which sounds like talk, which sounds like the boatbuilders
as they ease about the wooded space, handling compass planes,
talking of cleats and chines and carvels, making tea,
clearing their throats, sculling over boat terms in their heads

 

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       Suzannah V. Evans has published poems in PN Review, Stand, Magma and New Welsh Review, with others broadcast on BBC Radio Bristol and longlisted for the 2019 and 2018 Ivan Juritz Prize. She has read her work at Keats House, London, where she organised Keats House: New Poets, for York Literature Festival, and at Underfall boatyard in Bristol, where she was poet in residence in 2019. She is Reviews Editor for The Compass and a doctoral researcher at Durham University. Her debut double pamphlets Marine Objects / Some Language (Guillemot Press) were published in January 2020.

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