Today’s poem is ‘last orders for chesterfield’ and sees the author moving invisible through a town as it crosses night with day (night-shift workers going home). The imagery conveys Spring set in decay (a rusty bicycle, russet skeletons of cars) with the writer unseen by locals (the waiting drivers don’t look up or step aside to let me pass), her history erased (the churchyard wall is clean of my dark signature), and yet in some small way, the spirit of her remains (he might pause to wonder what it is that seems to stir). This is a dark and sad poem (when I reach my parents’ house it will be overgrown with waist high-nettles) but it is not maudlin nor does it demonise the characters it portrays, besides of course the taxi driver who quickly turns from hero to villain (the lass he rescued, ‘the slapper was locked out’)

Helen began her poetic writing as a ghost in a pub; her first pamphlet, ‘a pint for the ghost’ is a memoir of a time now lost but still resonates in the mind. It is a set of poems that Helen has performed as a sequence, a running monologue of different characters, in ‘worked-out mines, smoky pubs, and deserted highways’. (more…)