Praise and Poems

There are faint echoes of poets such as Kathleen Raine and Amy Clampitt; but Kingsley’s restlessly explorative, intuitive verse promises to ripen into a distinction all her own.

Read more about Ayala Kingsley on her website: www.ayalakingsley.com

Read extracts from The Stars Inside

Water dancer/Eurydice

for Jeannie

In a white dress, vase for one barbed flower,
she floats moon-fingered, drifting,
a medusa in transparent skirts
or a narwhal beneath the split sea surface,
impaled on her own horn.

In a petticoat of an unstudied red,
frilled, gill-pleated—the flounced mantle
of the sea-slug ‘Spanish Dancer’;
or the silk within torn silk of rosebuds,
or the blood behind her eyelids.

In a black gown sharp as a blade,
long as an afternoon spent sleeping—
waking to shadows and low tide;
a crack through which slip all entreaties,
a rain of basalt fragments.

She moves with tones and undercurrents,
fault-lines, and the shifting cave light;
intermediary, instrument, instar,
brittle and yielding as a periwinkle,
cupping the rumour of oceans.

Water fills her ears. Faster than through air,
sound weaves past, shudders, scatters,
like something incompletely fashioned,
or some too-late reminder.
She longs for the ribbon of music
to wrap around her waist,
to tangle in her hair.