Crucifox

By Geraldine Clarkson

It feels like this incredible pamphlet from Geraldine has been ages arriving. We're so glad it is finally here in all its foxy glory!
Crucifox is more a state of mind than a particular creature or person. The collection circles rebellion, emergence from disappointment and fasting, new beginnings, recreation following destruction; soulwork; inspiration and the act of writing itself. There is a focus on female desire and feral impulses behind polite exteriors; assumed responsibilities and pre-packed creeds; the role of women within close-knit community, the silent and marginalised aspects of women, their masking and unveiling and the stilling of their tongues. There is no shortage either of vermin and sleaze, crime, including murder; along with curlicues, cleaners, clowns, gambling, lotteries, and a lot of luck…
These poems are intricate poetry masterpieces – breathtakingly beautiful, stomach churningly real. We know you will love this wonderful work!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Verve Poetry Press
• Release date: May 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781912565993

Geraldine Clarkson

Geraldine Clarkson lives in Warwickshire and is the author of three poetry pamphlets, including a Laureate’s Choice and a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet choice. She has won the Poetry London and Ambit competitions, as well as the Magma Editors’ and Anne Born prizes, and has been commended in the National Poetry, Arvon, and Mslexia competitions. Her poems have been published widely in UK journals including The Poetry Review and The Rialto, in anthologies such as Best British Poetry (Salt, 2014), Best New British and Irish Poets (Eyewear Books, 2018) and The Valley Press Anthology of Prose Poetry, 2019. Geraldine has spent many years involved in teaching refugees and migrants, as well as in admin, secretarial, office-cleaning, library, and care work, and her writing is influenced by her Irish roots and a formative period spent in a silent monastic order, including some years in South America.

Book preview

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PUBLISHED BY VERVE POETRY PRESS

https://vervepoetrypress.com

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All rights reserved

© 2021 Geraldine Clarkson

The right of Geraldine Clarkson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

FIRST PUBLISHED MAY 2021

Printed and bound in the UK

by Positive Print, Birmingham

ISBN: 978-1-912565-59-7

ePub ISBN: 978-1-912565-99-3

a fox sees all that there is to be seen,

And from all sides

—Marianne Moore

CONTENTS

Janus

The flowers you gave me started speaking

On a Hill

Christmas Surgery

Apple Snow

My spirit broke her fast on you

Fainting Room

In Old Mr Spence’s Kitchen

FILTH

Fox, the Prisoner

Fox, the Prisoner II

FOX NEWS : CREATRIX

CROSSFOX : CROSSBOX

After ‘IF—’

lemonjim: brittle england

Compliments of the Patron

St Osburga’s Surprise

Brood

Bell-ringer’s Knee

In Praise of the Office Cleaner

Labials of a Half-Remembered Lover

BOOK OF BLUE

éclat & cast lots

I could murder a prose poem

winding down

The Three Felicities

Acknowledgements & Thanks

Crucifox

‘Geraldine Clarkson is—quietly, attentively, humbly—writing some of the best poems of our time.’ - Kathryn Maris

Janus

For all that December left with pinched lips,

and interminable evenings of the soul,

January burst onto the scene all hips

and buttocks, with mornings of grey silk

and angora-bedjacketed frost,

presaging something else

entirely. I’d had years of the turn,

a hateful