It is a great pleasure to introduce this month’s poet. Alex Josephy and I met last November. We both read at the ‘virtual’ Poetry in Aldeburgh festival, along with poets Sharon Black and Christopher North – all of us with a connection to Europe.

Alex lives in London and Italy. Her collection Naked Since Faversham was published by Pindrop Press in 2020. Other work includes White Roads, poems set in Italy, Paekakariki Press, 2018, and Other Blackbirds, Cinnamon Press, 2016. Her poems have won the McLellan and Battered Moons prizes, and have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the UK and Italy.

As part of the Poetry School Mixed Borders scheme, she has been poet-in-residence at Rainham Hall, Essex, and in Markham Square, London. Alex is a poetry mentor and writes reviews for publications such as Envoi and London Grip. Find out more on her website: http://www.alexjosephy.eu

I have chosen four poems from Naked Since Faversham which show the range of her work. I hope they speak to you, as they did to me.

Grasshopper, Castelvecchio

Stalled between diagonal slats,
you’re a dry hull, ridge-backed

as if whittled from a vine stem,
forelegs splayed to grip the ledge

you’ve chosen for shelter.
Hail made me close the shutters;

that’s when I noticed you, remote
in winter torpor. When I woke

you were still here, a cold wedge
interrupting the light.

Each time I pass I look for you,
imagine how the frost

deepens, fills your hollows;
hear no rasp of song, no longing

for green. Cavalletta, little horse,
I hope we’ll see the spring.

A Word in Your Ear

Cielo, the heaven
of unimportant things:
half an hour together

in the usual bar.
It’s a light still on
when the morning sky

starts to remember blue.
Cielo, just look
at the shape of it:

five strokes, a hasty dot,
slight enough
to skim a canvas

on a brush-tip, watery
peaks and arcs.
That fluent curve –

a sudden smile,
stand-offish verticals,
and then a hug.

A little bite of something
sweet and quick –
cielo, cielo, ce l’ho!

warbles the pastry cook.
His cielo is yeast
that swells the heart

of a brioche, opens
rooms of warm air
in a bread roll.

Going Up

At the door I pause to salute
the white plastic vessel. Press

the panel, cupping a palm
beneath. The blessing flows;

I wring my hands, fold them,
gather a fearful breath, hope

for the best. Together we can fight
infection. Shed what I’ve carried,

invisible on the wheezy bus. This is
a clean hand zone. Trace finger bone

to knuckle, heart line to life line.
Catch a whiff of spirit,

hurry through Reception,
head for the silver lift.

Therapy

Take thistledown, hold it in the bowl
of your palms. Feel it tingle
like Spumante.

No, it can’t mend your heart,
but it will float you to the surface
of your skin.

Each time you long for your child
across the ocean,
find a river

or a canal., worn stone steps
down to the towpath.
Accept

a kingfisher’s quick shot of blue,
a moorhen’s buoyancy;
how easily

they dive, come up somewhere
unexpected, sleeved
in a twist of air.