
Given my poetry pamphlet is now sold out (thank you to everyone who bought a copy), I thought I would record the poems for my much-neglected YouTube channel. Here is a transcript of the first one,
Last Born
Quickened pain, surprising me
out of all birth plans
and breathing techniques
and the crickets of the TENS
machine crawling up my back.
I had woken early
completed the lists:
paired socks, as my pelvis
pentangled like pulled knitting.
And all too soon
the burn, the squeeze, the heft
was beyond unbearable
but then
you released –
a tide of meaning
from me
into the world.
My last born.
Completing this compost
of family
this outrage
of us.
Never forget how you came:
child of mine.
Never be afraid to labour, and
never push down pain to places you cannot feel it.