Liz Berry

We're delighted to share these new works by Liz Berry, as part of our online poetry celebrations.

BLUEBELLS

Halfway through my life
I knelt in a wood of blue flowers.
They were offering
their bodies to the sun;
its kindness flooding them
with a wild green grief.
They had been in darkness
for so long. 

I let my voice disappear
like a wren into the violet
as their words ran through me.
My sisters.
Lift your face to the light,
they said,
you must not be afraid. 

FLORA

In Spring, I let myself go wild -
throw away the blades, waxes, little pots of stinking cream
and grow myself a garden
where grass sways lush
and foxgloves bare their haughty throats to bees. 

I close my ears to Winter's yammering,
trail curious fingers through bluebell
and May Queen,
seek that spot as twitchy as a wren’s heart
that sings when touched. 

Every dawn is an unbudding:
hares box, worms rile in blind bliss,
girls, those harebells, rise from their beds
ready to stir the quiet earth.
I hum like a zephyr and the world answers. 

O I am what the city, huddled in the long slush of thaw,
has dreamt of these nights: gold, green,
a balm of dock upon its stung flesh.
I turn cherry trees to debutantes curtseying in silk,
tower blocks to copses sighing with light.

About Liz Berry

Liz Berry was born in the Black Country and now lives in Birmingham. Her first book of poems, Black Country (Chatto 2014), described as a ‘sooty, soaring hymn to her native West Midlands’ (Guardian) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, received a Somerset Maugham Award and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award and Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2014. Her pamphlet The Republic of Motherhood (Chatto, 2018) was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet choice and the title poem won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2018. Liz is a patron of Writing West Midlands and works as a tutor for organisations including the Arvon Foundation and The Poetry School.