poetry pf header
Arts Orgs image map
Second Light Network Enfield Poets Shortlands Poetry Circle Cornwall Poets Canada & US Tour

poetry pRO Transl. Café 234
Hilary Elfick (interview from p68)

Poets: browse the list

  

ppf SHOP ONLINE      MEMBERS’ EVENTS     MEMBERS’ COMPS & CALLS Dec23: Enfield
 
see/hear: poetry p f YouTube playlist: Chris Hardy reading his poem Cleaning Up
 

donations will be very gratefully received.

latest on site:
   Alessio Zanelli
   Janet Hatherley
   Judith Wilkinson

latest new pages:
   Mary Michaels
   Chiara Salomoni (biog)
   Marina Sanchez (biog)
   Anne Stewart
   Eleanor Livingstone
   Valerie Bridge

COMPS & CALLS
Dec 2023: Enfield Poets

latest comp results:
   Frogmore Press 2023
   Second Light 2023
   Ware 2023

selection of books:
   ppf shop online

previous projects:
   Blyth Valley Radio
   poetry tREnD

featured poet – Katherine Gallagher


Katherine Gallagher

Dancing on the Farm

I wanted to dance with my father,
dance fast over dirt tracks,
dance full-flight across creeks;
breeze past the watching crows,
surprise every sheep and cow:
 
jazz-waltz, foxtrot, jive –
to find some joie-de-vivre
that seemed to pass him by.
 
At my first bush dance,
he pulled me to my feet, saved me
from being a wallflower:
his way to say caring.
 
He was master of the slow waltz:
I’d seen his cool toe-balancing,
the grace of it, guiding my mother
into circles of Lehar and Strauss.
But the foxtrot…
Too fast, he shrugged, I’m past it.
 
I didn’t believe him, standing there on the edge
of my dream with his face slightly pained –
as if giving bad news
and the gentle side of him spoke:
a look that said he was vulnerable,
my Dad, opened up,
the weight of days holding his feet
to the boards.
 

Katherine Gallagher

first published in collection Circus Apprentice, 2006,
Arc Publications (later in Carnival Edge: New & Selected Poems