I hate to be the one to tell you this

By Zoë Walkington

It's a shame, isn't it, to have to rat on your neighbours? Upsetting to find out that both your husband and the dog have been telling you lies? And I hate to be the one to tell you this, but there are bad people everywhere, at large, going about their business. Financial insolvents on online-dating sites, contortionist plumbers with a point to prove, and a bloke named Barry, from Halifax, who is singlehandedly ruining the livelihoods of perfectly legitimate psychics.
It's not all bad news though, there are sham marriages to look forward to, ducklings to be held captive by, and that dog, well, you can always put him up for sale. Life, I'm afraid, is based on nothing more than slippery moorings, and this debut pamphlet breaks the bad news with humour and a twist of darkness.
The poems in this collection erupt with beauty and emotional resonance. These are graceful meditations on human relationships with each other and with themselves. The voice of the poet is strikingly unique, but there are also moments when it seems to be coming from within us, from the place of personal wonder: 'Outside a wood-pigeon coos monotonously / its slung together nest is hidden from view, / just like your knickers are, mostly, / and your feelings about your mother.' – Romalyn Ante, co-judge of the International Book & Pamphlet Competition

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Poetry Business
• Release date: Mar 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781914914423

Book preview

At Large

I can tell you about bad people.

How they will go through your cupboards.

One day you’ll turn round from unloading the dryer,

and one will suddenly be there, in a balaclava,

only he won’t call it a balaclava but a bally,

and you’ll wish you’d listened when the dog, earlier,

barked and barked at what you thought was probably a fox.

Some of them will be apprehended in unusual places,

like on an EasyJet flight before it disembarks,

or at the top of a rickety iron ladder to an attic room,

or on a small boat coming in from a boating lake in York.

On arrest, some of them will be wearing a remembrance poppy

but mostly they are still at large, going about their business

Shopping at the big Tesco, grabbing a bag of Walkers Ready Salted.

Waiting in line at the petrol station.

Let me be your safeguarding concern

My first sight of Kent and Medway

was ricocheting out of the back

of a transit onto the A259

close to midnight.

The English police made the stop.

We heard their low murmuring voices,

van doors banging, from in the back.

I wasn’t hanging about.

I had a cap on, from a place

I haven’t been to. NYC

it said in red stitching.

The international signal for

not giving a