Jennie Carr

Jennie Carr lives in rural West Oxfordshire where she loves to walk and run in the countryside and write about it too. She joined Jenny Lewis’s classes in 2012 and has since continued to attend her workshops. Jennie’s poems have been published in magazines and anthologies including The Book of Love and Loss (Belgrave Press 2014), The Cannon’s Mouth, Brittle Star, The Frogmore Papers and Oxford Poetry. She won Third and First Prizes for Poetry in the Brittle Star writing competitions 2014 and 2016 judged by Mimi Khalvati and George Szirtes respectively. ‘Storm’ was a winner in the Poetry Society’s Autumn 2016 Members’ Competition and published in Poetry News. The poem was recorded and played on National Poetry Day in Covent Garden tube station.

Paragon Station 1960

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His dad gives him the penny
to put in the slot, he moves the hand
to ten-past-twelve to point at M,

pulls hard on the lever – a clonk
as the letter is stamped into metal –
then back to I back to C to H

and over to ten-to-twelve for the A
before the E (the moment he knows
how to spell it) and round again to L,

a final heave on the guillotine lever
severs it, the little strip of aluminum
dropping into the delivery box

and all day long the feel of the tag
in his pocket as he rubs his thumb
over the bumps of his name.

Paragon Station 1960 won first prize in the Brittle Star competition judged by George Szirtes.

Chatterpie Lane

Stalks thicker than a wrist catch in the flail
crack and clatter into the cutting chamber.

All morning the machine moans
crashing back and forth along the lane
spitting sticks and crisp packets.

The shocked hedge lies in its wreckage.
Cans and plastic bottles litter the ditch.

Celandines yellow the bank. The hawthorn blears:
greenness springs from splintered stems.

Jennie Carr

Paragon Station 1960

Chatterpie Lane

Copyright remains with the author