Aura
by Emily Berry
Listen to me little water
I called you up believing something
would arise in me believing
I could make you reappear
on my way to the cemetery
every face was luminous
as if they knew something about
the dark I think you
were in us all reminding me not
to despair or if despairing know
that we did not lose each other
either side of the calamity
we fused you went inside
& I could not see you
but afterwards afterwards
I could see underwater I
could see in the dark I could see
with my eyes closed I could see past
the shimmer that separates the living
& the dead and I knew there was nothing
no separation it was just
aura the most remarkable
sadness & if only I would
keep looking I would see you
From Stranger, Baby. Reproduced with kind permission of Faber & Faber
Forward Prizes for Poetry
Shortlisted for Best Collection 2017
Stranger, Baby
Emily Berry
About Emily Berry
Emily Berry (b. 1981, London), editor of The Poetry Review, is shortlisted for her second book, Stranger, Baby. It addresses, she says ‘the long shadow cast by the loss of a mother in childhood — my own loss’.
Her first book, Dear Boy, won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2013. That book focused on eerie, elliptical narratives and askance, lively interactions with the discourse around mental health, gender, domestic (dis)harmony and psychoanalysis.
Stranger, Baby drives those strategies into a more personally intimate space. ‘There are’, she says, ‘a lot of other people’s words in the book alongside my own. So it’s lonely but it’s also companionable.’
Forward Prizes History:
- 2013 Forward Prizes for Best First Collection, Winner for Dear Boy (Faber & Faber)
