Hilary Menos worked in London for Time Out as a journalist and food reviewer before moving to Devon to renovate a Domesday manor house, farm pedigree beef cattle. and raise three children.
'She has the rare ability to uncover the wide range of implications of the world we live in, be they emotional, spiritual or literary. Here is a new poet with a full locker of accomplishments.' - John Stammers
'Elegant, witty, poignant, polished. This is poetry that makes me gasp.' - John Latham
'She observes her personal life and transmutes it into poetry with skill and purpose.' - Gerard Benson
This collection was a first stage winner in The Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition 2004.
GIFT
I want to write you a small square poem
that starts with space and a vague notion of form
then pitches in headlong - not holding its nose
at the pull of another body - to atmosphere,
the curve of coastline, a fjord's fold and wrinkle,
borders, boundaries, the abrupt hyphenation of dams,
and hurtles through the sprawl of domes and spires
of a small Italian town to a piazza where,
between candy-stripe carts of ice-cream sellers,
past lunchtime chatter, waiters bringing Lavazza
and orange juice, it finds firm ground,
lands on the page like a flag, like a map of a world
impossible to resist and, catching the wind,
unfurls and soars like a bird circling the square.
'She has the rare ability to uncover the wide range of implications of the world we live in, be they emotional, spiritual or literary. Here is a new poet with a full locker of accomplishments.' - John Stammers
'Elegant, witty, poignant, polished. This is poetry that makes me gasp.' - John Latham
'She observes her personal life and transmutes it into poetry with skill and purpose.' - Gerard Benson
This collection was a first stage winner in The Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition 2004.
GIFT
I want to write you a small square poem
that starts with space and a vague notion of form
then pitches in headlong - not holding its nose
at the pull of another body - to atmosphere,
the curve of coastline, a fjord's fold and wrinkle,
borders, boundaries, the abrupt hyphenation of dams,
and hurtles through the sprawl of domes and spires
of a small Italian town to a piazza where,
between candy-stripe carts of ice-cream sellers,
past lunchtime chatter, waiters bringing Lavazza
and orange juice, it finds firm ground,
lands on the page like a flag, like a map of a world
impossible to resist and, catching the wind,
unfurls and soars like a bird circling the square.