Formerly an actress, Kate Firth is a voice coach based in Barcelona. She has had poems published in various anthologies and magazines. Passionate about poetry as an oral as well as written tradition, she has performed at Bristol, Cheltenham and Winchester poetry festivals.
Fruity Competition
1: Blackberry
I could be a black fruit poem:
richness of darkest choicest blackberry ripe,
juicy my tongue,
liquid Blueberry Delight with billberry.
A wilderness of bramble and thorn
a wicked thicket
enticing my wild dark words
with fleshy mellow flavour.
Rounding my mouth,
swelling my lips, staining
my fingers, my tongue,
guiltlessly shamelessly
announcing my appetite
for purple, for blue
and for you.
One word of me is not enough
you will want more
and more and one more
and just, perhaps,
one more.
You will come with fingers ready,
with buckets and with your children
and you will love me.
I will hide me in hedgerow,
and your children will find me
love me
and eat me before I am ready to ripe me.
And many times you’ll walk right past me
because you’ve forgotten
I am free for the picking.
2: Mango
I could mango my words with exotic twist
and tang and peel and stone and sucking stone
and hair and watering tongue and lick and dissolve
to sugar your flesh.
Mango with southern scent of Mexico, India, Africa
so sweet within one skin
to outwit your blue blackberry dark forest competition.
I will win with mango slow go,
just wait for me to ripen, wait
for my words to arrive and surprise
and startle your eyes awide
and awaken your mind with tease and touch
and soft and silken sticky my caress.
Hold you my heaviness,
heavy my juice and catch me peel me
catch my liquid juicy in your cup,
slice me through or suck me whole,
but unpeel me first,
pierce me through my leather my skin my leathery skin
but wait for me first for my ripen
or I will not surprise and pleasure you.
Wait,
for my ripening
to drop from branch
onto your sunlit sill.
Kate Firth
The Yew Speaks On St Brigid’s Day by Kate Firth
