Jessie Summerhayes

• After lockdown I was a poet. 
• My world needed holding steady: I listened. I wrote. 
• I wrote about things that lurked in my unconscious, people, the trees, what the trees told me and the hills (they told me things too).
• I wrote a book (rúnian – that means whisper in Old English); I recorded an album, a spoken word and music version of that book – (me and The Ciderhouse Rebellion).
• I was published in another book (called Viral Verses).
• I wrote another book because I couldn’t help it. 
• It isn’t out yet. 
• I kept writing. 
• I can’t help it. 
• I’ve released two more albums with The Ciderhouse Rebellion – The Tears of Jenny Greenteeth and Ironstone Tales
• Either my head or the world won’t quieten down, I don’t mind. 
• I am a poet.  

//

Thick Affairs 

Hedges are supposed to be thick affairs, 

not these measly attempts at romance, 

but they dance in the wind all the same. 

Their ankles are exposed, they’ve grown out

of their trousers, that sit, greenly childish, on 

their hips. They are a dishevelled border,

the fields bleed through them. Grey rabbits 

are obvious by their feet – they should be

hidden by green. Plastic shields lie

discarded, as they bare their shins 

through growing. This is a broken romance,

but a romance all the same, the birds 

shift in sheltering arms and flowers 

adorn their green clothes in garlands 

of spring. The wind lifts pale leaves 

like a father lifts his child – to dance.

(2021)

//

Chapped Voices

It’s been long enough that the bones,

with cold, don’t remember how to move, 

lips grasp at fleeting words and lose 

the will to speak in failing, words dethroned 

at the behest of winter. Bodies are stones 

but address each other like the blues 

in the empty sky, minds are confused 

by the intimacy of silence – it’s grown, 

the hedge, since we last visited, how,

when all we’ve ever seen is brown leaves 

and tiny birds singing in chapped voices.

Yet, even here, with the cold, even now 

our blood is evident – are you grieving?

Or are your lips bleeding with choices.

(2021) 

//

Cold-Weary

The pale reeds he frequents are frozen, 

they shift and shiver with the aches of wind, 

in the hollow the water has chosen. 

And snow lies, like the cold discarded skin 

of the fallen sky – brown wings are breathless

and draw shaky lines through a day worn thin. 

An official looking fence was helpless 

against my advances – through the half-light

I glance to his fluttering wings, much less 

easy to distinguish in the half-night,

harder to see amongst the creaking reeds, 

my feet are agitated, out of sight 

amongst the tangled knot of snow and leaves –

as my breath settles, winter in my throat;

he flies at will through the cold-weary trees

as though he could escape the hold that chokes

the sky and the reeds: earth wears a cold coat.

(2021)

//

• A collaboration with The Ciderhouse Rebellion: Adam Summerhayes and Murray Grainger. 
• They improvise folk style music – which weaves a narrative created between them.
• I read my poems – narratives. 
• The two narratives talk to each other. 
• This is Cider with Jessie
• We have three albums – rúnian, The Tears Of Jenny Greenteeth and Ironstone Tales