It is a great pleasure to introduce this month’s guest poet Tania Hershman. I met Tania a few years ago when I attended a series of workshops she gave on flash fiction. She is a generous, inspiring tutor. I have chosen four different poems from her new collection.

Tania Hershman’s second poetry collection, Still Life with Octopus, was published by Nine Arches Press in July 2022, and her debut novel, Go On, a hybrid “fictional-memoir-in-collage” will be published by Broken Sleep Books on 17 November 2022. Her poetry pamphlet, How High Did She Fly, was joint winner of Live Canon’s 2019 Poetry Pamphlet Competition and her hybrid particle-physics-inspired book ‘and what if we were all allowed to disappear’ was published by Guillemot Press in March 2020.

Tania is also the author of a poetry collection, a poetry chapbook and three short story collections, and co-author of Writing Short Stories: A Writers’ & Artists’ Companion (Bloomsbury, 2014). She is co-creator of the @OnThisDayShe Twitter account, co-author of the On This Day She book (John Blake, 2021), and has a PhD in creative writing inspired by particle physics. As writer-in-residence for Arvon for Autumn 22-Winter 23, Tania has curated a programme of readings, workshops and talks, both online and in person. Find out more at http://www.taniahershman.com

Still Life With Octopus (II)

I only asked her once to climb inside a jar for me. (Before we met, I’d watched all the videos of those experiments.) She sighed but did it, said I could screw the lid, released herself easily. You could become any shape you want, I said. She said nothing. One arm sent itself out to switch the kettle on. While she made us tea, I put the jar back in the cupboard, feeling that slight ache from too much sitting in my hip bones, my lower back, where fixed part meets fixed part of me.

Standardized Patient*

Today I am your
lower back pain. Listen,
I have all the details, will
not veer

from the script. Tomorrow
I will be your cancer
of the kidneys. Next week,

I may be your
one-legged skier (I know,
I know). Whose pain
is this?

*Standardized patient simulation lets medical students practice on people trained to play patients.

And then God

sends someone else’s
Jewish grandmother
to stop me

with a question about birds
I can’t answer. She says – as if
this is her river – I’ve never

seen you here before,
then presses for my
exact address. Instead

of the usual, Such a nice
girl, no husband?, she asks,
No dog? I don’t know why

I tell her then
that I’m a poet, but
the gleam in her eyes

warns me this
is the point
to leave, the unasked

dancing on the path
between us: Will you
make a poem out of me?

Middle of the Night

Night asks me
to wake up. What?
I say. Night whispers
darkly, something
about cats coming in
and out, a baby five
doors down. You
want company? I ask.
Night nods. I get up

and we make tea. Too
early, the cat mutters
as we pass. Night
and I get back
into bed. I’m fine
now, Night says.

Cover design: Ben Rothery

Note: Peter Godfrey-Smith, Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life (William Collins, 2017).