written by Jessica Mookherjee

Notes from a Shipwreck

“Vigorous and magical as a flask of crisp salt wind.” – John McCullough (Panic Response: Penned in the Margins)

“Notes from a Shipwreck is a miraculous and important collection of poems, written with inventiveness and extraordinary phrasing. Each poem is a magic box of language: surprising, transforming, and always wonderfully disquieting” – David Morley (The Fury: Carcanet)

poet, editor, ecologist teacher.

Cover Art: Jason deCaires Taylor https://www.underwatersculpture.com

Here is a poem from the book:

The Act of Slipping 

 

It is a smart move to dive with the right equipment. 

I hear the stutter of reporters and photographers

that cold November morning when you waded up to your neck,

a blasted heart covered with a steel cylinder of diver’s gas.

It was freezing cold and drove so fast to catch the slack tide,

I still hear the sound of the mackerel.

I really miss you, I was there at the tideline,

shivering against a cold blast and that sound

of a motorbike backfiring against the hallowed, bright sky.

 

buy Notes from a Shipwreck here from Nine Arches Press https://ninearchespress.com/publications/poetry-collections/notes-from-a-shipwreck

Tigress

Shortlisted for the Ledbury Munthe Poetry Prize for Best Second Collection

(Nine Arches Press)

£10.00
“Fierce, often funny and always charged”

Poems from Tigress

Ursa Minor

Four thousand and seventy four friends

on Facebook, pout-perfect teenager,

stares at me through a silicone laptop.

Just before her bud-burst, she sent me

a Friend Request, status update,

she dreamt a bear ate her last night.

Poor Callisto, running to forest-mother,

don’t talk to strangers until you get there.

In her dream, she lived in a house of glass,

in the woods, seen by bears, seen by wolves.

My urge to reply, fleshed with memories

of the shock of being so new, so ripe.

I typed: love sometimes eats us up.

We are all animals in moonlight.

Callisto, LOL, smiley face, heart,

don’t go into the woods to be torn apart.

Outside he watches her, clicks on her posts,

likes her pictures of new hairstyles, picnics

and drinks with friends. A gust of hot breath

on glass, broken screen. Bite marks.

Ursa Minor was first published in The Journal and Highly Commended in the 2017/8 Forward Prize for best single poem. Ursa Minor also appears in the Bloodaxe Anthology: Staying Human (2021). 

Flood

(Cultured Llama)

“With overarching themes of migration, otherness, sexual awakening, maternal mental illness, the impact of catastrophe, of loss and being lost, Flood is a debut collection from a genuine virtuoso with a powerful original voice.”

£10.00

New Pamphlet of Poetry: Play Lists (Broken Sleep Books) 2021

“Jessica Mookherjee’s Play Lists is a collection of poetry dripping with nostalgia for a time when love was a name on a pencil case, rock and roll meant everything and the world seemed so much wider. “

£6.50