The Tall Lighthouse
Poets: Abdul Jamal |  Abi Curtis |  Adam O'Riordan | Andy Brown |  Aoife Mannix |  Baden Prince |  Brendan Cleary  |  Camellia Stafford |  Cathy Ryan |  Ebele  |  Gareth Jones |  Graham Buchan |  Heather Taylor |  Helen Mort |  James Bell  | Janice Fixter |  Jay Bernard|  John Clarke | John McCullough| Keith Please|  Ken Champion |  Kim Lasky |  Lisa Dart  |  Maggie Sullivan |  Marc Swan |  Miriam Gamble | Nii Parkes |  Pierre Ringwald | Retta Bowen |  Rhian Edwards | Ronnie McGrath |  Wendy French

Abi Curtis

Abi Curtis Abi writes and teaches poetry and fiction. She studied at Exeter University and has a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Sussex. She won an Eric Gregory Award in 2004, and her poetry has been published by The London Review of Books, Reactions, Magma, Seren and Stride.


publications:
humbug

Whether through her unusual choice of subjects, vocabulary, or her subtle shifts of rhythm and image, Abi Curtis renews the everyday in moving and surprising ways.
                                                                                                                            Andy Brown

 

A Power Cut from humbug

 

stopped short our quarrel.

You were wide-eyed and mid-vowel,

I was consoling the last of the bottle.

A loss of shadows brought

silence and a cryptic table-top. 

How many matches have we got?

Two, I think, and a crooked candle. 

They made an amber island of our table.

Strange objects stirred their angles on our shelves,

as though at night-time they had other selves.

Your arms: alive with optic-down,

half of you enhanced, the other: gone.

Shall we talk? I asked, and reached across,

mistaking your hand for the honey pot.