I wrote these for a Uni assignment when I was 20. This is what I said about it:

‘My poems are a collective attempt at postmodern poetry. Their ideas were derived from teachings of ‘Postmodern F(r)ictions’ in particular, including Chapter 7 of Smith’s The Writing Experiment (2005). Much of postmodern fiction subverts the traditional narrative by playing with fact or truth, questioning ‘plot’, using allegory and fantasy, and expanding genre (Smith, 2005), amongst other features, as I have incorporated in my portfolio.’

25/10/2022

Living Inside A Violin

Up and up and up; the soaring sound of the strings

One, two, two and one, the walls around me sing 

When I cry, she weeps too

And I sink myself onto the hardwood

When it is morning, her light flows in

And my eyelids flutter open

Awake, I get up for the day, with so much to do

The long sweeping room; a welcome to my loneliness

With the angel tears, the curved ‘F’,

Twice shadowed on the dancefloor that is my room

Morbid Puppet Romance

I’m sorry for what I did

But I won’t undo it

Your hands are softer now

And the stitches suit you

Look, I can lift my finger

And you will move

So, sit back and relax

I see you; I know you so well

When we kiss, between my teeth

I’ll pull out the string

That was stuffed inside you

Perhaps taking with it 

Something from the heart

A rolled-up note, a love verse

Wet and weathered

From the beatings and rainstorms

I’ll pull it out so you can breathe again

And I’ll swallow it for myself

Truth/Untruth

When I was fifteen and learning the ropes

I stood on the shoulders of my dad and step mum,

Shouting out obscenities, or whispering them under my breath

About how wrong the world was

It was all based on a belief, a truth

Something seen as solid fact but was really crumbling

Under the weight of a feather

When I was sixteen and becoming depressed

I stood on the boulders of my small town

Listening; not shouting, learning; not preaching

Certainties that once carried me through became theories

And the weight of everything came crashing down 

Hitting my head and my nerve endings

And breaking my back on its way to the floor

Where the lines and the truth became blurry and rearranged

Into something foreign and beautiful

Dementia Poem

I told Laura to open the curtains to let the light in

When she got up to do it, I forgot who she was

I screamed and grabbed the remote on the nightstand

And threw it at her

Tears sat on her eyelids, watching with anticipation

Disguising her despise

I think I know what it meant

There is love in persistence 

Grab my hand and lift me up

Take me to the kitchen and let me stare out the window

Something is burning in the oven

Get it out, get it out!

My baby, burnt to a crisp

No one cried with me on the linoleum

Loneliness Poem  

She is asleep, with no lovers or friends, so the bed is cold

Wind, or perhaps ghosts, cry in from the night through the window

And above her, the chandelier flickers a quiet flash of orange

Candlewax lands on her cheek; she wakes from the stun of the heat

It quickly dries, and she decides to leave it there

It felt warm and clung to her skin as she smiled, falling back to sleep

She will survive this loneliness, but she doesn’t know that yet

Tomorrow she’ll tiptoe to the shed and make something of it

Iris’s Notebook 2025