INDIGO DREAMS PUBLISHING LTD
Jackie Biggs began writing poetry late in life after a successful career as a journalist.
Originally from Hertfordshire, she lived and worked in London until she moved to west Wales in 1986.
She is passionate about poetry off the page as well as on it and performs at many spoken word events and venues, both solo and in collaborative groups. She actively supports other writers as co-organiser of the Cellar Bards spoken word event in Cardigan; and is a former chair of PENfro Book Festival.
'Breakfast in Bed' is Jackie’s second poetry collection. Her first, 'The Spaces in Between', was published in 2015. Her poetry has appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, both in print and online. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Jackie reads her work regularly at spoken word events and is a member of the Rockhoppers (Coast to Coast Poets) performance group. Blog: http://jackie-news.blogspot.co.uk Twitter: @JackieNews
Poetry
138 x 216mm
56 pages
£8.99 + P&P UK
ISBN 978-1-912876-11-2
PUB:
ORDER HERE
Breakfast in Bed
Jackie Biggs
Love arrives in an array of flavours, scents and colours. Taste it in food and nature: in honey, ice-cream-sundae, salt of the sea, fresh ripe strawberries. Explore the love of a small child for her parents, a mother for a lost baby, a family for their father. Romance and eroticism, love for self, feelings encountered when love is lost,withheld or twisted are here to experience too.
***
“‘Breakfast in Bed’ invites us into a world of shared intimacies, poems where food is love and love is food, comforting and sensual. Desire hovers over a bowl of strawberries. Times past and times present blend, as childhood memories and deep hurts urge the imagination to find comfort and sustenance in the world around us. These are poems for our times, when it is the small things that matter, and love above all.”
Maggie Harris
“Precise and elegiac, these poems distil memories with an acute luminosity. Like a fly caught in amber, Jackie Biggs captures the chance moment or fleeting reflection in luscious colour and detail, resulting in a quiet but effective provocation of the senses.”
Kaite O’Reilly
Breakfast in bed
In the morning when you bring me
strawberries
it is the way you concentrate so carefully
to select each unspoiled bursting berry
the ripest, reddest;
it is the way you watch
as you raise these gifts to my mouth
and place them between my lips;
it is the way your eyes see me clearly
as I suck and savour these fragrant fruits.
I turn my eyes away
red fruit in glass bowl on pure white sheet
then, it is the way you lick juice from your own lips
that wakes new light as our eyes meet.
Sex and death
Heart on fire
breath gasping
eyes wild
you shout –
some sound without words –
arms and legs flail.
Spasm takes your body
– all of your body –
and all of your mind.
The only sound
blood rushing in your head
until finally
you come
to the point
where nothing else exists
and
you
let go
into darkness.
Postcard to my father
I have wanted to go back to that place for so long,
to breathe the same air, to be where you were
when that final event happened, by the loch those
many years ago. Could you see the view as you
left us? Was the surface water rippled in the
breeze, or was it blue, flat and clear? Could you
see the pebbles underneath, smooth and round?
How green were the trees in that midsummer
midday? Did you smell the warm grass, taste the
minerals of earth, hear all the finches singing in
the birches? Did the golden eagle soar above the
white clouds? Did it fly away towards the distant
Cairngorm? Did you think of me? Did you wish I
was there?
I see you
violin strings over summer dew
larks rise above yellow meadows, I see you
where buzzards soar into the far blue
turn to climb ever higher, I see you
as trees stand tall and fresh leaves tremble
in warm spring wind, I see you
where a stream courses down a mountain
water falls over a cliff, I see you
look up in the quiet of midnight to
full moon and countless stars, I see you
when a rose catches sun as it rises
water silvers in the glass, I see you
in the outlines of trees traced on pale walls
as curtains drift in the breeze, I see you
in the morning when I study your face
sun and shadows play on us, and I see you.
Alone and together
A city that snares
slow rhythms
(Federico Garcia Lorca)
A river flows through
afternoon’s slow heat
Lorca’s pace
(together and alone
juntos y solo)
babble at café tables
rises and drops into shadow
by the waterside
sun falls through trees
the flicker of fresh leaves
in green spring
(solo y juntos
alone and together)
wine is red, time is yellow
the rhythm of the river is ours
for this hour adrift
Woman sits on a beach
and watches the sea swell and sink
surf pushing in and pulling out
and she thinks …
how vast is the ocean
how massive are all the oceans together
how she rejoices in the swim
how much she loves him