Biography

Helen is a quirky poet from a onesie free household. In 2021 she was 1 of 5 finalists for the Brotherton Prize ( published by Carcanet ). She curates the website dyslexiapoetry.co.ul a project which aims to support neurodivergent writers. Her pamphlet This Lexia & Other Languages was published in 2020 (.v.press) She curates the Nantwich Poetry Page - which advertises arts events in the Crewe Nantwich area and she is creative director for Poetry Whitchurch ( Shropshire ) She has a sidekick diva hen puppet called Nigella.

Samples

Not Waving But I cannot fathom how everyone is fooled by letters, how people think that ‘s’ and ‘t’ together make the perfect ‘st’. We need to talk about ‘s’, more snake than letter. You’re never sure which way it slimes, whether it will hiss or buzz. Not to mention how it hides at the end of words where I cannot find it, how it makes a problem multiply. I am shocked that people trust the snapping jaws of v’s and k’s, the dangling hooks of f’s and t’s, the letter-river I am drowning in and no-one sees it, drifting, like a ghost where I am the ‘h’, unrecognised. Consultation. You have just ten minutes, starting now, for me to listen tactfully to symptoms then grasp your real reasons for coming to ponder twenty pathways for a lump to touch ‘places’, to use latin-named tools and explain them, to compose prescriptions selecting from a hundred brands of drug to step back from the fact that your growth may be terminal and you have young kids to be your soothing medicine, to listen to care deeply that you suffer no hurt (which really is why I swore the oath) to take punch bag talk not of my making, then to type it all up before the next ten and the next ten tens until we hit the target of more casualties, more cuts, more sutures and we carry on talking faster, typing faster. No tears, tap, come again, tap, next please. Why she fell in love with doors Swing of a page to a new year. Door yawns to first footers bringing shortbread and sloe gin. She must open more doors; no, shut them. Draughts prick her calves. Light shafts stab past a hinge’s stiff applause. A chain smiles across an open slit. She jokes with her kids to ask callers to put a hoof through the letterbox as proof, to beware the wolf who flours his claws. The door’s side is pierced with keys and bolts to keep out bad things. Flashback : midnight in a moon-milk kitchen, A backdoor handle turns. He is outside, a low, spitting growl. Door plays dead.

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