Poem
Helen Ivory
WAITING FOR BLUEBEARD
WAITING FOR BLUEBEARD
WAITING FOR BLUEBEARD
The child in the garden wears a coatcollaged from the skins of paper,
sutured with lengths of my hair.
I am inside the house
in a matching coat.
There is no one to tell us not to;
called here, as we were
by the halloo of peacocks
who turned tail
the day we arrived.
We are waiting for Bluebeard,
and when he happens here
in his grey-silver car,
he will unleash wolves
like rain.
© 2012, Helen Ivory
This is the title poem of the collection Waiting for Bluebeard, to be published by Bloodaxe Books in 2013.
Helen Ivory
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1969)
Helen Ivory is a poet and artist who, together with her husband Martin Figura, runs the Norwich-based literary organisation, Café Writers. Written on the wide canvas of the everyday, her poems create small, eerie resonances in the spaces just beyond what happens.
Poet-critic James Sutherland-Smith has said: “A visually precise poet, with the gift of creating stunning images with an economy of...
Poet-critic James Sutherland-Smith has said: “A visually precise poet, with the gift of creating stunning images with an economy of...
Poems
Poems of Helen Ivory
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WAITING FOR BLUEBEARD
The child in the garden wears a coatcollaged from the skins of paper,
sutured with lengths of my hair.
I am inside the house
in a matching coat.
There is no one to tell us not to;
called here, as we were
by the halloo of peacocks
who turned tail
the day we arrived.
We are waiting for Bluebeard,
and when he happens here
in his grey-silver car,
he will unleash wolves
like rain.
This is the title poem of the collection Waiting for Bluebeard, to be published by Bloodaxe Books in 2013.
WAITING FOR BLUEBEARD
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