HELEN MORT
Field
Two roe deer, making springboards of the mud.
They leapt through hoops of blue-black air
and landed in the circus of the wood,
their white tails raised in bright fanfare.
Each movement seemed more true than good.
Then branches curtained them from view
and something startled out of us
sprang after them into the dark. And you
turned first, I followed you
our movements good and never true.
Helen Mort was born in Sheffield in 1985. Her collection Division Street is forthcoming from Chatto & Windus. She has published two pamphlets with Tall Lighthouse Press, the shape of every box and a pint for the ghost, a Poetry Book Society Choice for Spring 2010. Five-times winner of the Foyle Young Poets award, she received an Eric Gregory Award from The Society of Authors in 2007 and won the Manchester Young Writer Prize in 2008. In 2010, she became the youngest ever poet in residence at The Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere. Helen's website can be found here and her blog, Poetry on the Brain, here.
