Tether
by Ruby Robinson
i.m. E.V.A Cowell
Some say grief is a lookout-tower,
a swinging cage rigged beside
the heart, battering
a plume of sail.
Some find an anchor, slipping its noose
and on the sand, unloosed –
a canary, a little sun
rising up.
From Every Little Sound. Reproduced with kind permission from Liverpool University Press.
Forward Prizes for Poetry
Shortlisted for Best First Collection 2016
Every Little Sound
Ruby Robinson
About Ruby Robinson
Ruby Robinson (b. 1985, Manchester) grew up in Sheffield and Doncaster: her poetry has been published in The Poetry Review and Poetry. She draws inspiration from writing which takes her ‘somewhere unexpected’, and lists previous Forward Prize–winners Ted Hughes and Claudia Rankine as amongst those who have left a lasting impression on her.
Robinson says that, as a child, she used to ‘write things down that angered or confused me, in lieu of being able to protest out loud’. This relationship between sound, quietness and expression is an important part of Every Little Sound, with its epigraph from tinnitus expert Dr David Baguley: ‘Internal gain – an internal volume control which helps us amplify and focus upon quiet sounds in times of threat, danger or intense concentration’. Robinson brings that intense concentration to the otherwise drowned-out sounds of our everyday internal world.
There’s a fascinating review of this collection by Martin Crucefix, here.
