House

By Myra Connell

Myra Connell's House is a startling debut collection of poems that are both enchanting and disquieting, that ask questions, look for clues, and mark out telling absences. The house itself might be deep in the woods, high on the moors, or alone at the end of an urban terrace; simultaneously a real place, and a body, a mind, a home for the soul. Is it a shelter or a fortress, solid or decaying, welcoming or defended? A cast of characters come and go from its spaces, the outside world presses in at the windows, wilderness awaits at the threshold.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nine Arches Press
• Release date: Jul 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781911027591

Myra Connell

Myra Connell grew up in Northern Ireland and now lives in Birmingham where she works as a psychotherapist. Her stories are published in various places, including the Tindal Street Press anthologies, Her Majesty and Are You She? Her poems have appeared in Under the Radar, Obsessed with Pipework and The Moth. Her first pamphlet was A Still Dark Kind of Work (Heaventree Press, 2008), and her second, From the Boat (Nine Arches, 2010). House is her first full collection of poems.

Book preview

ONE

One

So here’s the house.

It makes the corner,

stands where two streets meet,

and looks towards the sea.

One flat wave is foaming at the kerb,

the water green, and icy.

The tide is at the door,

and yet the woman says it isn’t high enough for bathing.

That’s a lie: she lied,

the woman with the black and shining hair,

to stop the other swimming.

Out the window to the sea-front

they could see the waves run in

slant and slant against the road.

She lied.

Or both the women lied,

needing one the other.

I want to know more about these cows

Mornings, they’re out: big bodies,

roan, cream, and grey with mottles. Heavy, nose to nose.

Steam rises from their nostrils, backs.

This triangle of grass and mud (a pretty triangle, she said)

is bordered by a stream, which they could cross,

the cows, by sliding down the pock-marked bank

and wading. Beyond, a meadow.

By noon, he’s locked them in again.

The black shed doors are closed, three hay-rolls

rustler-stacked against them. Inside

the cows are back in fetid darkness.

He himself has gone to early