Tag: S Reeson

Poetry (not) Politics

No idea what you’ve handed me, nouns written in absentia
another over-wordy prose tirade, pastel ideas
past sell-by dates from people whose idea of grief
omits the blood from ears and nose, because it
might cause strong offence: not real, we’ll just pretend.
So tired, assumptive reasoning somehow rewrites
effective hold of trauma scored in skin, tattooed abuse;
never again will moments dawn in light, grasping
somebody else’s stanza’s bright, because it’s metaphor
never supposed as anything but mirror, their desires.

Now you, stuck here within my prison of anxiety, might yet
begin to grasp true terror of complexity: what lies beneath
difference defined by other people’s ignorance, time to destroy
control bursts from within, two meters brain to heart,
these terrified, traumatic moments fracture, rip apart.
Why not refuse to live in class or race, rejecting
any part in bigotry, replacing lifetime’s worth of pointless
adjectives for fair, diverse, all true: explain then how I
justify to you, whose idea of perfection’s strictly gendered, white:
fair means by which we all, together, set this world to rights.

Wolfpack Contributor: S Reeson

Famous Blue Metaphor by S. Reeson for “Before I Turn Into Gold” Online Leonard Cohen Anthology

S Reeson [she/they] is 55, bisexual and married with two children: they have suffered anxiety for all of their life, and started telling stories as a ten-year-old in order to help them cope. Now, they write and record poetry, short stories and episodic fiction, whilst dissecting their unique creative process using both video and audio as the means to continue coping.

Their work has been published by Flights / Quarterly ejournal, Green Ink Poetry, Fevers of the Mind, Acropolis Journal, Selcouth Station, Black Bough Poetry and Flapjack Press, plus performances at Gloucester Poetry Festival, Flight of the Dragonflies and the monthly event at Wordsworth Grasmere. They have read alongside countless poets, including Caroline Bird, Steve Camden, Deanna Roger, Jeremy Dixon, Julia Webb and Wendy Pratt, and in 2021 they read at the Essex Book Festival. They’ve also learnt and grown creatively via poetry courses run by Apples and Snakes, Kevin Higgins, Wendy Pratt and Jonathan Davidson. A self-produced poetry chapbook was produced in November 2020 (available to buy here).

In October 2021 they were nominated for the Best of the Net Award.