Highbury Park
by Liz Berry
In the woods at night men are fucking
amongst the gorgeous piñatas of the rhododendrons,
the avenue of cool limes.
By day I walk my son down the secret pathways,
smell the salt rime of sex on the wind,
a condom glowing with blossomy cum,
knotted and flung; I bury it gently
under the moss with my boots.
I envy them, these lovers, dark pines
beneath their knees, the tarry earth
opaline with the desire paths of snails,
fallen feathers in the dirt like warnings.
I know those days of aching to be touched
by no-one who knows you.
After he was born I wanted nothing but the wind
to hold me, the soft-mouthed breeze
coaxing my skin like the grass
from a trampled field.
How heavenly it seemed then, light shafting
emerald through wounded leaves,
the woods a church, we its worshippers,
and all that sex — freed from love and duty —
like being taken by the wind, swept
from the cloistered rooms of your life,
stripped and blown,
then jilted dazzling in the arms of the trees.
From Wild Court. Reproduced with kind permission of Wild Court.
Forward Prizes for Poetry
Shortlisted for Best Single Poem 2019
About Liz Berry
Liz Berry (b. 1980, Black Country) won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2018 with ‘The Republic of Motherhood’, having previously won Best First Collection in 2014 for her Chatto debut Black Country. ‘Highbury Park’ describes an overgrown park in Birmingham where Berry went on long walks with her newborn son: ‘As the spring came I felt my body being brought slowly back to life by it. I thought often of Highbury’s nighttime lovers (I was the day shift) and how the pleasure of our experiences and longings might intertwine.’
Berry’s advice to poets starting out is to ‘be tough on your poems but kind to yourself… Listen to poems being spoken, let their electricity light you’. Berry’s unforgettable final image of the lover taken by the wind — ‘stripped and blown, / then jilted dazzling in the arms of the trees’ — is surely a prime example of that illuminating electricity.
Forward Prizes History:
- 2018 Forward Prizes for Best Single Poem, winner for ‘The Republic of Motherhood’ (Granta)
- 2014 Forward Prizes for Best First Collection, winner for Black Country (Chatto & Windus)
