supper song, a new poem by Holly Corfield Carr

a call, a choral, a corral,

a mud midwife, en caul

for luck, for luc, a fluke

of light uphill, an appel,

a pell, a peeled apple,

is a strike, is a skin,

is a skinned white thing,

like a coil of light undone

uphill, appalled by heckle,

up hackles, up cackle,

a cat call, a cut, a cull,

a lull in the kill and all

ears are all air or ore, awww

yess! this noise of awe at

greasy ingots in the vault

of a bin, all a a a egg, all

a a a nd saveloy, it’s all

I can do to keep my hands

out like I’m holding the hymn,

the sheet wet with sunlight,

salt, my stomach bright

with pain, having eaten

every last chip for spite,

as if they won’t peel my bones

when it’s high time, as if my tough

hide would hold up to high tide,

as if the chorus is not what

all of us will always

recall of the

song

     .

supper song  was written for Tim Dee and Little Toller and was premiered at the launch of Landfill. In the coming weeks, to celebrate this remarkable book, we’ll publish essays, films and more from this squabble of voices.

HOLLY CORFIELD CARR is a poet based in Bristol. She makes poems, books and performances for museums, galleries and sites across the UK, including an orchard, an eighteenth-century crystal grotto and a passenger ferry called Matilda. She has read her work on BBC Radio 4 and at the Royal Albert Hall for the Proms on BBC Radio 3 and she has worked as poet-in-residence for the Wordsworth Trust, Spike Island and the National Trust. She received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2012 and won the Frieze Writer’s Prize in 2015. Her most recent publication is Subsong, published by the National Trust. www.hollycorfieldcarr.co.uk

Photograph by TIM DEE.