Posts By: Elisabeth Sennitt Clough
How I Did It: Forward Prizes – Elisabeth Sennitt Clough on ‘My Name is Abilene’
Welcome to our Forward Prizes 2023 ‘How I Did It’ series. This year we asked the poets shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection to write about the inspiration behind some of their poems from the chosen collection. Here’s Elisabeth Sennitt Clough on what inspired her to write My Name is Abilene. My Name…
Elisabeth Sennitt Clough
‘Pretty Fish’
The bad sister is lured by gelatinous scales – she slops the good sister’s carp into a pail, but the August sun warms the water, turns it stale. . The bad sister gathers the withered bits: a pelvic fin, a vertebral segment, the delicate inner skin, displays them on her vanity: their bones gleam like…
Elisabeth Sennitt Clough
‘Wasn’t It All Twinkly When We Sang Happy Birthday?’
Marilyn Monroe’s ‘Happy Birthday, Mr President’ dress sells for record $4.8m – BBC News I hated the storage years, each of my hand-stitched crystals dulled by moths and cobwebs. I craved Madison Square again, the night they sewed you in to my rib-chafing tightness, my flesh-coloured brashness. Under the lights, you shrugged your fur from…
Elisabeth Sennitt Clough