Helen Evans
Helen is a poet, editor and tutor based in Devon, whose debut poetry pamphlet, Only by Flying, was published by HappenStance Press in November 2015.
She was a glider pilot for 25 years and this experience has been a major inspiration for her poetry. Flying is one of the key themes in her pamphlet. About half its poems are about it: birds as well as gliders. Helen began her working life as a journalist, and started gliding in 1988. Between 1999 and 2008 she combined her career with her hobby as editor of the sport’s national magazine, Sailplane & Gliding. She was awarded a 2009 Certificate of Merit by the Royal Aero Club of the UK. In 2007, thanks to an evening course led by Greta Stoddart, she started to write poems in earnest again. She went on in 2010 to gain an MLitt in Creative Writing from the University of St Andrews, where her tutors were Robert Crawford, Kathleen Jamie and Don Paterson. Her poem Night Crossing came third in the Manchester Cathedral prize in 2010 and her work has appeared in various magazines, including The Rialto and The North, Obsessed with Pipework and The Broadsheet. She has read at various festivals and venues in the South West. Since 2011 she has worked each year as a tutor on the University of St Andrews’ Creative Writing Summer Programme, which is directed by Jonathan Falla. Helen runs workshops, gives readings and can offer feedback on and help you edit your writing. You can find out more at www.helenevans.co.uk and www.facebook.com/helenevanswriter. Only by Flying is available from http://www.happenstancepress.org/ |
Level crossing
I can’t stop thinking about that woman,
last week, in Lincolnshire,
whose car hit a van
and span
under the falling barrier
on to the track,
who spent the last minute of her life
trying to drive
out of the trap.
Why didn’t she just open the door
and run?
My phone rings. I ignore it.
But I know that in less than a minute
I’ll call him back.
Bycatch
In drifts like dead leaves, too many to count,
they mark the tide-line all along the sands:
blackened plaice, the length of grown men’s hands,
trawled up, immersed in air, then thrown back drowned.
Caught up with them, razor clams and whelks.
Lost net-floats. Plastic bottles. Brittle stars.
Kelp, its fronds and holdfasts caked in tar.
The broken-edged remains of scallop shells,
and small, dismembered crabs: the newly killed
just turning green, abandoned by the gulls;
the old, all carapace and barnacles.
And sea urchins, stripped bare, like sand-filled skulls.
Hide and seek
I love that childlike trick
the March sun plays
when I’m driving down the M5 at dusk
how it sets beyond the low hill
just west of the Avonmouth Bridge
but rises on the elevated section
rattling along the railings like a child’s stick
before plunging behind the cutting’s wooded shoulder
while the parallel lanes of rush-hour headlights I’m stuck in
stream downhill to drained marshland
where mist’s forming steam-like
around hedges and damp embankments then
just as I’m resigning myself
to twelve cold hours in the shade of the planet
out it bounces again
a Day-Glo orange ball
silhouetting a naïve spire and nave
on the spine of a conifer ridge
before trundling across the North Somerset Levels
between buildings and drainage ditches
and budding deciduous trees
now you see it
now you don’t
now you see it
I can’t stop thinking about that woman,
last week, in Lincolnshire,
whose car hit a van
and span
under the falling barrier
on to the track,
who spent the last minute of her life
trying to drive
out of the trap.
Why didn’t she just open the door
and run?
My phone rings. I ignore it.
But I know that in less than a minute
I’ll call him back.
Bycatch
In drifts like dead leaves, too many to count,
they mark the tide-line all along the sands:
blackened plaice, the length of grown men’s hands,
trawled up, immersed in air, then thrown back drowned.
Caught up with them, razor clams and whelks.
Lost net-floats. Plastic bottles. Brittle stars.
Kelp, its fronds and holdfasts caked in tar.
The broken-edged remains of scallop shells,
and small, dismembered crabs: the newly killed
just turning green, abandoned by the gulls;
the old, all carapace and barnacles.
And sea urchins, stripped bare, like sand-filled skulls.
Hide and seek
I love that childlike trick
the March sun plays
when I’m driving down the M5 at dusk
how it sets beyond the low hill
just west of the Avonmouth Bridge
but rises on the elevated section
rattling along the railings like a child’s stick
before plunging behind the cutting’s wooded shoulder
while the parallel lanes of rush-hour headlights I’m stuck in
stream downhill to drained marshland
where mist’s forming steam-like
around hedges and damp embankments then
just as I’m resigning myself
to twelve cold hours in the shade of the planet
out it bounces again
a Day-Glo orange ball
silhouetting a naïve spire and nave
on the spine of a conifer ridge
before trundling across the North Somerset Levels
between buildings and drainage ditches
and budding deciduous trees
now you see it
now you don’t
now you see it