Category / Poetry

by Carol J Forrester

Poems Against Platitudes, No.1 by Carol J Forrester

When they say “nothing in life is handed to you”
I’m going to call bullshit.
Here:
every small, pricking doubt I’ve cradled
like a haphazard stack of crockery.
You can take it.
Each shard was gifted to me
without asking.
It is long past time I found someone willing
to clear out the cupboards in my chest. 
See how well I have nursed them
how big some of them have grown?

‘It’s All In The Blood’ by Carol J Forrester available from Amazon on kindle and in paperback.

We come from sheep thieves and cattle rustlers…
We have learnt what is proper…
Streaking towards the bogland…

Packed with mythology, history, and powerful women, Carol J Forrester’s debut collection centres on family, ancient mythology, and womanhood in the twenty-first century. Zeus is spearfishing over Stranraer, Megera is standing her ground, and Jormungandr wants to consume everything. Exploring the complications of expectations, and how the past can shape who we are, this collection is an accumulation of thirteen years of poetry.

“The poems are vivid and confidently crafted…” Helen Kay (This Lexia & Other Languages V. Press)

“A bold, brutally honest and dazzling debut collection…” Deborah Edgeley (Testing The Delicates)

“Gentle and reflective with an underlying poignancy…” D. Peach (The Rose Shield Tetralogy)

“…teeming with poems coming to terms with Forrester’s strength of voice – a voice which sings with the clarity of a poetry capable of holding all of life…” Liz Lefroy (GREAT MASTER / small boy (2021) Fair Acre Press)

by Carol J Forrester

Static Begins A Storm – #Poem By Carol J Forrester

This trail of fingerprints is simply browsing.
Palm pressed to the hollow of your spine
before you step out of the moment,
leave this touch behind you in that second
where electric ran your length
and cracked between your ribs
as something begins burning. 

I’ve combined by love of sketching and poetry to make some poem postcards for ‘The Muse Spits Blood’. They turned out rather nicely, so I think I might have to make some more postcards for the other quadrilles I have written over the past few years.

@caroljforrester

#poetry #postcards #writing #tiktokpoet #poem #mythology #greekmythology #drawing #sketching

♬ BARELY BREATHING – Grant Averill
by Carol J Forrester

Speak No Evil – A #Poem By Carol J Forrester

Temper your tongue with candyfloss static.

Electric
the bite is enough to ward off words,
stop them before the starting gates
in the narrow space 
between crowded molars. 

Use teeth to smile
around calorie free pleasantries. 

Taste patience becoming poison.
Every syllable sharp.
Bitter.

I’ve started recoding some of my poems and posting them to Tick-Tock. (@caroljforrester) Short and sweet work best, so I’m looking to a lot of my quadrilles as a starting point, and trying very hard not to self-sabotage with worries over how awful I feel I sound in recordings.

by Carol J Forrester

#NaPoWriMo2022 – Day Twenty-Six

My Body Is Like An Envelope

I have the watermarks
from when you steamed my secrets
loose from my skin. 
Boiling,
I felt every inch of you tremble,
kettle-like,
mouth a tight scream of a spout
shrilling for attention,
for answers. 
You left me unstuck, 
spilling words addressed to someone else. 
No one held your tongue accountable,
only mine,
here
see where I taped down the tears
the places that no longer seal.

Perhaps surprisingly, I always find the harder prompts to be the ones where I’ve done something similar before. I have a poem ready to send out for submission that works an extended simile/metaphor of a shipwreck throughout the whole piece. It can be easy to almost write the same poem again if it fits to the prompt, and I had to go off for a little think before I found a way to work around the old poem still lurking in my head.