A year ago this month, Gina Wilson died. The two of us met just over a decade ago on the Writing School run by Ann and Peter Sansom of The Poetry Business. We were both psychotherapists, working in private practice.

Gina was published first as a children’s writer – novels (Faber), poetry (Cape), picture books (Walker Books). Her adult poems are ‘complex, though deceptively simple’ and ‘tough and compelling, no verbiage, no sentimentality’ (Kate Clanchy).

Gina’s poems ‘lure you into thinking you’re on safe, possibly domestic territory. Then they catch you unawares, taking off at an unexpected, often surreal tangent.’

I am grateful to her family for permission to share three poems from Gina’s poetry pamphlets (Scissors Paper Stone, HappenStance, 2010; It Was And It Wasn’t, Mariscat Press, 2017.

First Shoes

I must label, swaddle, cradle them
at just the right temperature.
Their linings are cracking already.

The step of childhood ought to be
weightless, all skipping and dancing
but they look haggard, misshapen

as if old age has worn them.
Polish can’t cover their knocks.

I showed them once at a meeting.
Bring something you’ve kept we were told,
a sign, maybe something you’ve made.

I took the shoes. Nobody spoke.
Because of the way you looked someone said.
As if you were bringing a grief, not a pride.

Photograph with a Very Small Moon

It was still day, the end of a summer one
that people had been happy in;
I wanted its tiny white moon, not quite spherical or certain
to stay.

I wanted to catch it, lacy, fine, almost dissolving
in almond-blossom clouds, so I tilted the camera
upward. Otherwise I might have filmed

little barefoot girls setting up their lantern
with the glass door and tealight,
friends round the warped table, wine;

not the moon, but moths, and slugs
oiling the flagstones. I might have caught
a wind getting up, or the edge in low voices that moment
when darkness plummets.

Still Horses

He said he heard her
one night, about a week
after she died,
her Scots ‘r’
and no-nonsense tone
that carried without being
a shout.

He got out of bed,
found his balance in the dark
and took his time,
checking upstairs first (once a hayloft),
then down stone steps
to where it seemed
there were still horses
and a night-time smell
of straw and soft new dung.

She wasn’t there. Just a shawl
left draped because it was winter.
He opened the door to stars
and mild small moon
in a blur of frost.
Cold held him fast.