Jackie Colburn was an actor for eighteen years working in theatre in London, UK and Europe and TV and radio in the UK. She is an active Trustee of three charities, director of the family farming company, a fitness and Nordic walking instructor and mother of three children. She writes poetry and short stories and each year writes a play for performance by a group of up to 70 children aged between 7 and 16! She was lucky enough to gain a place at Oxford to read English in 2002 and has been a member of Jenny Lewis’s workshops at The Poet’s House since finishing the Oxford University Diploma in Creative Writing.
She runs a holiday cottage business in the Cotswolds where she lives with her husband and family.
Ice by Jackie Colburn
Outside tawny owl screeches
vixen bark severs the cold air:
choppy-fingered ice reaches outfrom the edges of the iron trough,
by bone chilling dawn the fingers
solder – seeping down into the waterbelow, and the thin crust becomes
a solid plate of smooth coldness,
a desert above ensnared water.Inside stalky straw rustles at the raw dark
milk warmth wafts from the stall
a ewe grunts at her new born lambs.
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