Adele Ward

Biography

I'm a poet and fiction writer, and also the co-owner and editor at Ward Wood Publishing, a company I set up in 2010 with Mike Fortune-Wood. Ward Wood publishes an equal amount of fiction and poetry. I'm also involved in a number of writing projects to support writers and blog on http://www.adeleward.blogspot.com I organise the twice monthly Friday Night Writers event in London's Swiss Cottage Library, with booked authors followed by open mic and a chance to submit to the annual event anthology. This event is on two Fridays per month and one Saturday per season in the Poetry Society's Poetry Cafe. Details are on http://www.fridaynightwriters.wordpress.com I help out at the Camden and Lumen Poetry Series of open mics combined with performance by published poets in London. Poems read at the Camden and Lumen Open mics can be submitted to be considered for the next anthology, organised by the project founder Ruth O'Callaghan. The Camden and Lumen Poetry Series supports two Cold Weather Shelters for the homeless in London. For information: http://www.camdenlumen.wordpress.com

Samples

PIAZZA BANDE NERE (Milan) Saturday, 1am. It’s just you and me again, sister, with seven storeys between us. My baby can’t sleep so I hold him here on the balcony where mosquitoes love me. At your post by the kerb you’re a goddess – black skin gleaming against the red flare of your dress in lamplight, moonlight and approaching headlights. The wives are already one month gone to holiday homes by the sea. There’s no need for your pimp to linger moulded to that tree trunk on his time and motion study. You squeeze the short red tube of your dress into a production line of Fiats. I worry over your empty slab until your stilettos cross it and you squat by a tree, roll up your hem like a stocking and clean out the last client. 2am. I put my baby in his cot then stay here with you. My husband expects me awake. The throb of the lift and jolt of the lock is him, jarring the silence. He will pull out a wad of notes from his shirt – count half for me with a licked finger. All week they’ll give off a sweet smell of sweat passed to them from the hands of men and women and the hot damp pockets they’ve lined. (First published in the collection Never-Never Land, 2009)

All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.