Friday Poem – ‘Beachcombing’ by Tiffany Atkinson

~ Seren Books

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Beachcombing’ by Tiffany Atkinson from the anthology A Last Respect. Don’t forget to tune into the BBC Radio Wales Arts Show tonight to hear the announcement of the Wales Book of the Year 2021 English-language winners.

A Last Respect is a selection of contemporary Welsh poetry by winners of the Roland Mathias Prize. The poems included are wide ranging in style and subject. They contemplate relationships, nature, the environment, mortality, time, art and politics, and take place in a range of locations, from Aberystwyth to Baghdad, from war-torn landscapes to parents’ evenings. Featuring Dannie Abse, Tiffany Atkinson, Ruth Bidgood, Ailbhe Darcy, Rhian Edwards, Christine Evans, John Freeman, Philip Gross, Gwyneth Lewis, Robert Minhinnick, and Owen Sheers, it is a must-have anthology of poetry from Wales.

Beachcombing Children will enter the water hands first. There’s a knack that women all over the world have of putting up hair in a knot, the pale nape gathers the salt. The babushka and the magpie own the beach but no one cares. Her fingers strum the muscles in her thighs. She’s a mountain but her fingertips are diamonds. This patisserie of crotches in their little wraps; how tenderly we don’t look. Airport novels crackle in the sand. Even the baby’s too dazzled to cry; his fat hands bounce on the breeze. I have spent a half-life on the wrong strand. Here’s the barman’s daughter selling frappé. I would like a bitter chinking glassful emptied on my head. I would like to drink the sea. I’d like every tiny house of sand to wear me down. When the small brown woman comes to snap the last umbrellas shut, she’ll tut and sweep the bones.

A Last Respect is available on the Seren website: £9.99

Create your free Seren account and enjoy 20% off every book you buy from us.

The Amazingly Astonishing Story by Lucy Gannon is on the Creative Non-Fiction shortlist for Wales Book of the Year 2021. Buy your copy here.

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