Winch
Lawrence
Tuck
Wedderburn
Hopkins
Hullo there,
Last week’s reading went very well — huge thanks to all who came along! There will hopefully be another event to mark the end of the issue in December. Watch this space…
Here are this week’s five poems, taking in sexy lettuce, sand dunes, danger signs, booming synapses and scout troop ring binders. Enjoy!
Chrissy
PERVERSE editor
PS Some poems may display in a different font to the others, because that’s the only way I could get Substack to preserve spacing, apologies.
PPS Olivia and Sarah’s poems should be fully justified, but that is not possible in Substack, apologies again.
PPPS As some poems have long lines, it may be best to view them on a larger-than-phone-sized screen, or a phone turned sideways, or projected onto the western face of Mont Blanc.
Alison Winch
determine your story
determine the main character
sexy lettuce
use proper formatting
SEXY LETTUCE
outline your idea
lettuce so sexy noone can abandon it
input stage directions
lettuce being sexy always [without trying]
proofread and edit sexy lettuce unabandonable lettuce sexy lettuce
Ruby Lawrence
Beach babe
Oh honey, you deserve it!
Hang like Jesus from a wave-tip,
be a salt-tolerant species for the day,
scrubby and ignored like a bush.
Let your hatred string and snot
into the benevolent malevolent ocean
who doesn’t give a fuck
about your intrusive thoughts,
thrusting themselves on you
like that man you saw wanking
in the sand dunes. I mean, please.
If power is to be brazen, let it
at least have some choreography.
Feel how the water drags your feet
across soft sea floor. Whisks your toes.
Such style. Fish sniff you —
who can blame them?
Imagine a stone cracking
the wanker’s head then falling
into glittering sand.
Clotted red on camel yellow.
Now dive and treat yourself:
find the stone. One that speaks
to you baby girl, just you.
Olivia Tuck
Glenelg Beach PSAs
DO NOT SWIM WITHIN 40 METRES OF BREAKWATER | DANGER UNEXPECTED LARGE WAVES CLIMBING IS NOT ALLOWED | DANGER STINGRAYS AFTER DARK SUCH BEAUTIFUL DANCERS | DANGER CREEPS IN JETTY BAR | DANGER FISH BONES IN BURGERS | DANGER HEATWAVE APPROACHING BETWEEN NOON AND 3PM HIDE UNDER JETTY | DO NOT JETTY JUMP | DO NOT GIVE HANDJOBS IN WATER FINES APPLY | DO NOT MISTAKENLY BELIEVE THAT THIS IS THE BEST BEACH ON THIS COAST THEY ARE ALL WEST-FACING ALL SUNSET HOTSPOTS | DO NOT SHRIEK AT TRAM STOP | DO NOT PROTEST AT PRICES OF BEACH CLUB COCKTAILS | DO NOT CRY AUDIBLY | DO NOT FUCK IN SOMEONE ELSE’S BED ESPECIALLY IF THEY ARE STILL IN IT | DO NOT GO FURTHER THAN 12 METRES BEYOND THE JETTY 6 METRES BEYOND THE FLAG 3 METRES BEYOND THE LITTLE SORT-OF-EDDY WHERE MOLLUSCS ACCUMULATE | DO NOT BELIEVE THE SINGING MOON TAKING HER NIGHTLY DIP SHE IS BITTER SHE IS STARTING TO LOOK HER AGE SHE HAS SEEN TOO MUCH IT ALL CONFLATES | DANGER THE NIGHT IS LITTERED WITH DROPPED BLADES DO NOT TOUCH DO NOT WANT DO NOT REACH FOR THE SHARP END OF A STAR TO PROVE THERE IS STILL BLOOD STILL BREATH IN YOU
Sarah Wedderburn
Application I have a hole in my skull at the front it’s quite deep a failed fontanelle closure or an accident as an infant I never did find out also I’m not sure if the hole goes direct to my brain or is just a dent in the bone it hurts if I prod so I try to ignore it I don’t understand what hobbies are so I haven’t got those but I adore flowers above all mimosas for their scent and the season they bloom their sweet yellow softness bringing hope after winter I love music and turquoise seas also dogs and meat I could never be vegetarian clothes are important I go for chic and minimalistic but don’t always pull it off I’m rubbish at hair and makeup so if you grant me an interview we’ll just have to hope I look reasonably well groomed ok and you won’t believe this I have two lines of small moles on my chest whose spacing is unusually regular and doctors say they’re not moles at all but traces of extra nipples left over from when we were animals like wolves anyway as a nursing mother I was a terrific milk cow but that may not be connected friends mean the world to me their love is my lifeline I’m now what they call happily married but romance had me hooked for years I nearly died don’t ever trust romance it’s a deadly drug I drink red wine though not too much except in occasional fits of joie de vivre or misery and despite an excellent education we can discuss if we must but I’d rather not I’ve done a ton of useless jobs you don’t need to know about I was bored out of my brain and often late still I read my way through the classics on the Tube and look I showed up fed my kids and here I am yes I cry easily things went wrong in my early life I lost people and stuff and sometimes my way but there were summers of pure joy I’m telling you these days I’m up for it all fair and square hey did you read about that woman who was born missing a vital part of the left side of her brain it was in the New York Times they said she would spend her life in an institution unable to speak but the synapses all fired and boom now look at her she’s brilliant quite brilliant is that all?
Holly Hopkins
What’s the best thing you’ve ever had between your legs? The closest I got to being asked this, we were on a playing field rattling our hangovers, watching boys play footie while sharing a chiller-cabinet dessert from its plastic tray and reading out sex and problem pages from Cosmo. There was a girl in my scout troop who kept them in a ringbinder.
No girl will ever ask me now. So, I can’t tell you why I’ve thought of it. The knowing it’s too late to give a sexy answer, that I’d be written off as done and cringingly domestic.
It’s my youngest’s head. After he had crowned one of the midwifes said I could reach down and touch him. His scalp was so soft, yet firm and warm, even in that moment I couldn’t help the embarrassing comparison. I can’t tell you how much was a hormonal slosh of love and how much relief that the head was through and only the shoulders to go. Then panic: he was silent. Why weren’t they doing something? I’m trapped on my back, why isn’t he crying! A woman in the hospital’s gang replied with a voice that said I was an idiot: because he isn’t born yet.
Contributor notes and bios
Alison Winch
https://www.gold.ac.uk/media-communications/staff/winch-alison/
Alison’s debut poetry collection is Darling, It’s Me (Penned in the Margins 2019). She is a media lecturer at Goldsmiths, teaching and researching platforms and advertising. Lettuce is the protagonist of her next collection.
Note on ‘determine your story’:
“Lettuce appeared after a couple of years of not really being able to write poems. Needy and afraid, Lettuce is a twisted but generous muse. Here, lettuce is trying to write a story but keeps getting in the way.”
Ruby Lawrence
https://www.instagram.com/ruby_lawrence_o/
Ruby is a writer and performer from North Yorkshire, now based in Glasgow. Her work has been published by Pilot Press, Propel, Gutter, The Moth and others.
Note on ‘Beach babe’:
“I wrote this poem after experiencing exhibitionism on holiday with my mum. It felt hugely violating and struck us as a greedy, exploitative and gendered co-option of public space (a beach). Interestingly, it triggered massive rage in us both, leading to revenge fantasises and fascinating conversations about why it is that exhibitionism is still laughed off by many as kinda harmless. The rest of the holiday was gorgeous.”
Olivia Tuck
https://www.instagram.com/livtuckreadsandwrites/
Olivia Tuck placed second in the Jane Martin Poetry Prize in 2023, and was longlisted for the 2022 Women Poets’ Prize. She is associate editor at Lighthouse. Her pamphlet Things Only Borderlines Know is published by Black Rabbit Press.
Note on ‘Glenelg Beach PSAs’:
“My favourite place is Glenelg, a seaside suburb of Adelaide in South Australia. People go there to let their hair down, but the beach is peppered with danger signs warning against jetty jumping and swimming near the ominous breakwater. Using signage as a prompt, and referring back to a Caroline Bird workshop which explored writing the ‘underside’, I decided to zoom in on Glenelg’s — and youth’s — chaotic, treacherous aspects.”
Sarah Wedderburn
https://instagram.com/sarah_wedderburn
Sarah Wedderburn’s poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies, both in print and online. She works as an arts and architecture writer and lives in rural East Kent with her husband and an unruly lurcher.
Note on ‘Application’:
“I never got the hang of adopting a professional persona (what is that?) and readily overshare. Anyway, this is a poem about spilling the beans, warts and all (and yes, beans can have warts). It celebrates the extravagant joy in being one’s unedited self, and also salutes with compassion all who, because they panic in stressful situations or are too shy or exuberant, sometimes self-sabotage...”
Holly Hopkins
Holly’s first collection The English Summer was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, The Seamus Heaney Prize and won a Laurel Prize. It received the Poetry Book Society’s Special Commendation and was named one of The Guardian’s ‘Best Poetry Books of 2022’.
Note on ‘What’s the best thing you’ve ever had between your legs?’:
“This poem grew out of thoughts about ‘sexiness’. That to present as ‘sexy’ is to present as if your body and life haven’t been altered by children. I’m also interested in the ways women judge and police other women. How cliques don’t go away just because you grow up. I didn’t intend to write about a birth, but I’m glad I did.”
See you for next week’s issue, with poems by Richard Capener, Terence Brick, Jacob Louis Beaney, George Ttoouli and Simon Turner.
Find us on socials