Pippa Little

Pippa Little lives in Northumberland with her husband, three sons and dog. She has been writing poetry all her life while working as an editor, teacher and literacy worker and due to ill-health now writes full time.

She is proudest of having won an Eric Gregory Award; of being one of the editors of Writing Women; that her first collection, The Spar Box, published by Vane Women, was a Poetry Book Society Choice; and of winning the 2008 Poetry Biscuit Prize.

As winner of the First Prize in Biscuit's 2008 Poetry Competition, Pippa was entitled to choose either £1,000 or the publication of a collection of her poems. Pippa has opted for publication, and her book, Foray, Border Reiver Women will be published by Biscuit in October 2009.

 

This Was The Year

This was the year before the year
that collapsed on us, a roof brought down by snow.
The year of riding through abandoned stations
on the riverside line that never crossed the river
but danced among warehouses, silos and factories (deceased)
beside battleships settling into red mud.
This was the year that, too exhausted to sleep,
I boiled down the pink and ivory and blue of other women's hands
into a single grey slab. The soap pot next the soup,
fumes of gardenia and bone.
This was the year we were always coming home.
Three steps and a garden where the splayed trike in the frost said
'better to have careless love than none at all'.
This was the year before the year
I found out we are made from lightning, our bodies
maps across which electrical storms flare
and move on. This was the year
extremely far rooftops and windows
seen from a plane flying its late night mission
had their glow zapped by pinball fire.
This was the year I closed the door underneath the porch light
and stood out on the first of the three front steps, listening.
Our children's beds expecting their bodies
to come warm them like small fires
but growing cold with waiting.