#emily berry

[typewriter-worries]

The Glass Essay, Anne Carson | Molly Brodak, Molly Brodak | Mothman Apologia, Robert Wood Lynn | The Numbers Game, Emily Berry

[april-is]

April 1, 2025: Bad New Government, Emily Berry

Bad New Government Emily Berry

Love,       I woke in an empty flat                      to a bad new government; it was cold          the fridge was still empty               my heart, that junkie, was still chomping on the old fuel            vroom, I start the day like a tired     motorcyclist     I want to go very fast and email you about the following happy circumstances: early rosebuds, a birthday party, a new cake recipe but   today it’s hot water bottles and austerity breakfast and my toast burns in protest

      You are not here of course but you live in me like a tiny valve of a man you light up my chambers           Later I will call to tell you about the new        prime minister,      the worrying new developments      and about how I am writing my first political poem     which is also (always) about my love for you

--

Hello, darlings, it's that time again: I'll post a poem every day in April, to celebrate National Poetry Month.

If you know someone who wants to receive these in a daily email, they can head over here and click the Join group link at the top of the page -- or just send a blank email to april-is+subscribe@googlegroups.com

Poems will also be shared on Bluesky! (April Is no longer hangs out on the platform formerly known as Twitter, given its whole N@zi problem.)

==

Today's poem not enough for you? Why not check out the old favs sent on this date in...

2024: vocabulary, Safia Elhillo 2023: Reasons to Live Through the Apocalypse, Nikita Gill 2022: New Year, Kate Baer 2021: Instructions on Not Giving Up, Ada Limón 2020: Motto, Bertolt Brecht 2019: Separation, W.S. Merwin 2018: Good Bones, Maggie Smith 2017: Better Days, A.F. Moritz 2016: Jenny Kiss’d Me, Leigh Hunt 2015: The Night House, Billy Collins 2014: Tim Riggins Speaks of Waterfalls, Nico Alvarado 2013: Nan Hardwicke Turns Into a Hare, Wendy Pratt 2012: A Short History of the Apple, Dorianne Laux 2011: New York Poem, Terrance Hayes 2010: On Wanting to Tell [ ] about a Girl Eating Fish Eyes, Mary Szybist 2009: A Little Tooth, Thomas Lux 2008: The Sciences Sing a Lullabye, Albert Goldbarth 2007: Elegy of Fortinbras, Zbigniew Herbert 2006: When Leather is a Whip, by Martin Espada 2005: Parents, William Meredith

[havingapoemwithyou]

no name by Emily Berry

[beingharsh]

The night prints itself upon me and I cannot decide yet, whether to come to you whole, or wait until I am gone. The end of the bed shrouded in fog, thoughts touching my face like soft rain. I must content myself with such perfect things as these: traces of disorder, burning couplets, very fierce inspiration … Slept continuously for three days and nights, like every true mystic. My voice falling over the threshold like light. But you can’t come in.

"The night prints itself upon me", Emily Berry, Unexhausted Time

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Sign of the Day...

December 12th is the feast day for the saint Our Lady of Guadalupe... She is said to have appeared, four times in December of 1531, as a vision, to an Aztec peasant, Juan Diego, who was so dazzled and overwhelmed that he was converted to Christianity and then went on to convert the vast majority of his fellow countryfolk… She asked Juan to erect a shrine, but the local bishop demanded some kind of a sign before he would go along… Juan told the bishop that the vision had told Juan that he should gather roses, but before he even could, he opened his cape for the bishop, and hundreds of roses fell out… And just to cap that off, also an image of the Virgin Mary appeared on the inside of his cloak. The cloak is now kept there in the Basilica in Guadalupe. Our Lady of Guadalupe is the patron saint of Mexico, and is also called the “patroness of the Americas”… But she is also known worldwide… Here she adorns a steak house in Amsterdam… There's something cheesily wonderful about this neon glowingness..

[Mary Elaine LeBey]

+

Be my mother, I said to the trees, in the language of trees, which can’t be transcribed, and they shook their hair back, and they bent low with their many arms, and they looked into my eyes as only trees can look into the eyes of a person, they touched me with the rain on their fingers till I was all droplets, till I was a mist, and they said they would.

- Emily Berry, from “Canopy,” in Stranger, Baby

[alive on all channels]

[just-a-girl-who-likes-sharks]

[kiki-de-la-petite-flaque]

[violettesiren]

Listen to me little water I called you up believing something would arise in me believing I could make you reappear on my way to the cemetery every face was luminous as if they knew something about the dark I think you were in us all reminding me not to despair or if despairing know that we did not lose each other either side of the calamity we fused you went inside & I could not see you but afterwards afterwards I could see underwater I could see in the dark I could see with my eyes closed I could see past the shimmer that separates the living & the dead and I knew there was nothing no separation it was just aura the most remarkable sadness & if only I would keep looking I would see you

Aura by Emily Berry

[lillyli-74]

I just want to be gone. I want to be unknown.

~Emily Berry

[strathshepard]

[warpeddistinctions]

Because of Us

This morning I learned

the English word gauze (finely woven medical cloth)

comes from the Arabic word غزة or Ghazza because Gazans have been skilled weavers for centuries

I wondered then

how many of our wounds

have been dressed because of them

and how many of theirs

have been left open because of us

- Emily Berry

www.emilyberry.co.uk

[emilyvberry]

[havingapoemwithyou]

the old fuel by Emily Berry

[beingharsh]

For a long time I experienced the quality of the dark in my city as something untrustworthy. When I went out in the evening it felt as though I were emerging in the dead of night or doing something profoundly at odds with the preferences of my body and mind. The warmth emanating from lit interiors did not comfort me but only reinforced my sense of alienation. I used to believe that if you write things down you can keep them away from you. So far this has not proved to be true. As my mind turns again and again through the possible panaceas or poultices I might apply to my psychic wound – hitherto impervious to every style of mind and body therapy you could care to name – I must contemplate the final truth that pain is indestructible and it is with a kind of relief that I recognise this epiphany, one I have had many times before and which never fails to seem like news to me.

"News", Emily Berry, Unexhausted Time

[violettesiren]

I felt I was born in a time when a lot of stuff was just…not known…So we asked, what was it like, to be a human being…? The clouds flushed with their ridiculous secret, light. Our minds like a playing field in spring… Most feelings are very old, they have been under the earth and then up to the surface again, they have been in the vapour of clouds and all across the surface of the sky like hairline cracks in the glaze on porcelain, our motivations under the river like pebbles or like the lives of unseen creatures that keep us alive… There was a song we had never heard before, it was a very old song, it was a song, we once knew but an imaginary one. Listening to it was like looking at the sky at a certain time of day, on certain days, in midsummer, as it slowly pulls itself apart. There were so many times I wanted to give up but then a message would appear from a complete stranger, from miles away, telling me to go on. So I went on.

(I felt I was born in a time) by Emily Berry

[6peaches]

Emily Berry - Bad New Government

Love,       I woke in an empty flat                      to a bad new government; it was cold          the fridge was still empty               my heart, that junkie, was still chomping on the old fuel            vroom, I start the day like a tired     motorcyclist     I want to go very fast and email you about the following happy circumstances: early rosebuds, a birthday party, a new cake recipe but   today it’s hot water bottles and austerity breakfast and my toast burns in protest

      You are not here of course but you live in me like a tiny valve of a man you light up my chambers           Later I will call to tell you about the new        prime minister,      the worrying new developments      and about how I am writing my first political poem     which is also (always) about my love for you