époque press
pronounced: /epƏk/
definition: /time/era/period
Anna Battersby
Poetry & Photography
Past things
This morning is, amber descension,
honey sprayed autumnal fizz.
Past birds popped on top, chirpy witnesses.
Colours ebbing and yours.
Past cornfields long since harvested.
One blade left standing, swaying the wind,
pinned at the edges, billowing the middle.
Your face and longing there.
Past carpets of tawny ferns mulching in.
Next year the result of this.
Parted silvery fingers, luminous threads
winter’s stitching icy beds.
Past blackberries brain-like endless and then,
sweetness concluded, we must try again.
Dull baubles darkening tongues,
darkening me.
Past a sky too blue
to streets varnished by rain.
Birds mirrored movements,
distant dotted blacks.
Past pavement shorelines,
still feeling the strength
and hurt of thorns needling in.
See skin-thin leaves scattering past things.
Path
Approaching we were
hand in hand cupped.
We talked
not to listen.
We walked.
A slip-slide down those
lives we chose.
Fleetingly past
I was there
in that time,
you, almost.
A zigzagging way and gone
we once sang.
Is in my bones.
Teeth, gritty grinding.
Bound but beneath.
A moment of movement
I saw
you and me continuous more.
I want to own it,
grip it tightly,
put it nestly safe
and nightly
away from hurt and harming
away from black thorns
and pointless mornings.
We have tried and deeply it
is love when tilted fits.
Decades and different lives
we have been
lovers, wives.
Trees listened to then whispered
the words unspoken
testimony, travelled, bespoken.
Now a gate I saw
I past,
held my breath,
last.
Slated greys blew rain
into my eyes
but they were already brimming.
Anna has been working in the Third Sector for over twenty years. She is as highly motivated by the incredible work charities do as she is by the immersive experience of her own artwork and writing.
In the 1980’s, Anna studied Fine Art and Mixed Media at the Byam Shaw School of Art. Her final year show included handmade books of her poetry and illustrations. She now makes short art films as well using photography, collages and writing poetry to express what she calls ‘other worldliness.’
She says, ‘over the years I have learnt to trust the creative process entirely viscerally. Creating poetry of the moment, experiencing a state of personal withdrawal akin to being in a meditative state, or to being a conduit through which emotions are channelled. The poems featured here were created whilst undergoing a painful withdrawal from my relationship with a long-term partner and the father of my daughters. '