Hélène Demetriades

Still life with gannet

White feathered corpse
floating in a rock pool
fringed by bright algae

neck tilted,
hilt of a soft grey beak plunging
into dark green clotted weeds.

It flew into death with half-opened wings
black tips soaked in old-blood red seaweed,
crown flushed orange
one ice blue eyelid revealed,
the incoming tide hungering close
to the chapel of its rest.

Hélène has recently joint won the Hedgehog Press Full Fat Poetry Collection competition 2020. Her collection ‘The Plumb Line’ will be published in 2022. She has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Envoi, Poetry Shed, Ink Sweat and Tears, The Curlew, The Ofi Press, Dream Catcher. She was highly commended by Patience Agbabi in Marsden The Poetry Village Competition 2019.