Lesley Curwen
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elcurwen.bsky.social
Lesley Curwen
@elcurwen.bsky.social
1.7K followers 1.1K following 150 posts
Poet, broadcaster, journalist, ex-BBC presenter, sailor, sea-swimmer.
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elcurwen.bsky.social
For ##PoemsAbout #chandeliers, a poem that riffs on that image. For @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk and the ##poetsofbluesky community.
Eating petit déjeuner at the table next to the tank Three bodies pile high, a chandelier of pink arms trying to mount a slimed glass wall. The croissants are buttery cones dabbed with yellow medlar jam, tart on the palate. A tattered carapace veers from stage right. Its mouthparts quiver, biting stale water. The owner brings a second café au lait whose foam sings heat on taste buds. A crab hooks three claws over the edge, heaves its bulk up. Slips back again.
August 22, 2025 at 9:02 AM
elcurwen.bsky.social
For #PoemsAbout #glamour, a small poem about dangerous colours. @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk
Final arrangement Lipstick camellias smear morning light, magnolia’s wax candles point aloft. Their faces smooch in my mother’s vase. Red and white together foretell death she used to say, imagine blood and bandages. My heart is a drained cup. It is too late for empty threats.
July 25, 2025 at 4:42 PM
elcurwen.bsky.social
For #PoemsAbout #Transitions, a sailor's view. For @alanparry83.bsky.social @brokenspinearts.bsky.social
Aground The world is tipped. We rest on mud. We are shaken out of our beds. Out of kilter. Tide has deserted us. The moon, yellow culprit, smiles above long harvested fields. We lurch, settle into an inconvenient world. Jewellery rattles off a shelf. We catch things as they fall. The vessel is not designed for this new reality. The water pleases itself.
June 20, 2025 at 8:59 AM
elcurwen.bsky.social
#Golitha Falls in Cornwall, a place of quiet beauty.
Waterfall, shady trees, dappled sunlight
May 18, 2025 at 1:46 PM
elcurwen.bsky.social
Still buzzing from yesterday's set at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. Huge thanks to CEO Anna Saunders!
Photo of Lesley Curwen with a microphone, reading her poetry, with a pink backdrop that says Cheltenham Poetry Festival. Heads of the audience in the foreground.
May 15, 2025 at 9:09 PM
elcurwen.bsky.social
The stage is set, for poetry readings here at Cheltenham Poetry Festival.
May 14, 2025 at 12:34 PM
elcurwen.bsky.social
I'm in sunny Cheltenham, preparing for reading at the Poetry Festival! If you're nearby, come along to hear the fantastic Beth Brooke and Frank McMahon read their work, plus me.
May 13, 2025 at 4:17 PM
elcurwen.bsky.social
For @brokenspinearts.bsky.social and @alanparry83.bsky.social, a memory of my northern hometown for #Poemsabout #green.
Pies & weeds brick mouths, dark works, blown smoke, a manufactury of men who clocked eight hours, five days a week at noon an unmusical bell sent hundreds running pell- mell for pieshops chasing each precious second away from the job, a desperate race where even fatsos cracked on a wobbling spurt through double gates away from bench and scurf some hands ate on the move, beef gravy lacing cobbles like brown blood, others lolled in graveyards, drawn by the sumptious green of weeds, until the factory clock forced sulky, slow, boot-dragged return, an ooze of coats, flatcaps into necessity's open jaws
May 2, 2025 at 10:31 AM
elcurwen.bsky.social
Huge thanks to Atomic Bohemian @brionycollins.bsky.social for choosing to publish a poetic collaboration from Stephen Paul Wren and myself! Congratulations to all the authors selected. 🙏
April 30, 2025 at 5:44 PM
elcurwen.bsky.social
Out today - this anthology of poems about Grief from @sidhepress.bsky.social. I'm honoured to have a poem of mine included. Buy it, and the profit goes to charities in #Gaza.
Book cover, title To Lay Sun into A Forest, Poems about Grief. Published by Sidhe Press
April 22, 2025 at 4:51 PM
elcurwen.bsky.social
For @brokenspinearts.bsky.social @alanparry83.bsky.social, here is an offering for #PoemsAbout #Saltwater. A poem about sea swimming in Devon in winter. 🌊
Salt molecules hang on lashes like stars. Ozone permeates lungs, hair curls tight. Beware transmution by air and spring tide. Sea will throw your soul to the south wind, roll you to unlooked for destinations, hold you alone and shivering in primeval dawns, break you to constituent parts and fold you in its frozen arms, a breathless proof of life. All boundaries are lost, sky leans close to seethe in your ear, skin the sole border dividing you from worlds of heaving wet
April 11, 2025 at 8:07 AM
elcurwen.bsky.social
Remembering my beautiful mum, wearing her Maireener shell necklace. Loving you always. x
My mum in the 1960s, wearing a Maireener shell necklace.
March 30, 2025 at 9:13 PM
elcurwen.bsky.social
For @brokenspinearts.bsky.social and #PoemsAbout #shiftingskies, a small poem about a voyager through the heavens first published by @eastridgereview.bsky.social. ☄️
The long-haired star In slow seethe around sun’s reach it draws an elliptical course, two great tails burning against the void. What looks like fire is dust and ice and rock bouncing sunlight back to earth, a shower of what-was-once, survivor of early universe.
March 28, 2025 at 9:57 AM
elcurwen.bsky.social
I'm so happy that @nationalpoetrylibrary has accepted my book 'Rescue Lines' on to its shelves. Published by @hedgehogpoetry, it's a book about finding and losing a sister. DM me for a signed copy, £7 incl post. #grief #forcedadoption #poetry #rescue #sister
March 9, 2025 at 9:35 AM
elcurwen.bsky.social
'The rocky way back is always open'. I'm obsessed by this line from 'Headlands' by Alice Stainer. Her poems whirl us through inner and outer geographies, in a lyrical, poignant dance. Recommended for anyone who loves poetry. From the wonderful @livecanon.bsky.social
Poetry book Headlands by Alice Stainer, published by Live Canon.
February 17, 2025 at 10:00 AM
elcurwen.bsky.social
A new wave of Untamed Nature poetry has broken, with the Whiskey Tree's second edition from @brokenspinearts.bsky.social including work from @jenferoze.bsky.social, @markantonyowen.com, @eatthestorms.com, @barney-ashton.bsky.social, @jamesmcconachie.bksy.social and other poet-stars, plus me.
January 17, 2025 at 10:45 AM
elcurwen.bsky.social
My poem 'Earth's gift' is being featured tonight on BBC Radio Devon, a poem about the sand on my local beach in Plymouth. Thanks to producer Catri Fox for making it happen!
January 16, 2025 at 5:46 PM
elcurwen.bsky.social
Poets, I cannot recommend highly enough the dazzling, transformative words of sea-obsessed poet, Ankh Spice from Aotearoa. @seagoatscreams.bsky.social. Lose yourself in his work, as I did. #TheWaterEngine #LiftToTheSky #poetsofbsky
A poetry book dressed in a swirling blue wave that becomes a human figure containing wheels and spirals, shedding birds from its arms. Title, The Water Engine, by Ankh Spice.
January 13, 2025 at 6:27 PM
elcurwen.bsky.social
An #untethered poem for @brokenspinearts.bsky.social for this day's #PoemsAbout. True story, enough to sadden any sailor's heart. #poetsofbluesky #sailing
'Vital Sark' Beached on a thousand egg-blue stones an ageing yacht lay squat on her keels far from any Channel Isle. Worn, but willing still: she waited, we thought, for someone to slip the line, point her westward, fly the faded sails. Some days, we marvelled that she made it through the great southwesterlies that dash glass and boats to smithereens. At dawn this morning the stone bed was empty. Anchor dragged, she lay up-ended in the shallows, holed and wrecked. Tonight, we drink a toast to Vital Sark, wondering how many storms it takes for something whole to be smashed apart.
January 3, 2025 at 3:55 PM
elcurwen.bsky.social
One of our contributors to the @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social Christmas & Winter Anthology is @lenaozge.bsky.social. Here is her sparkling film of the anthology poem.
December 19, 2024 at 6:58 PM
elcurwen.bsky.social
Thank you Rhona! Good to know it's arrived safely. And tonight we launch the @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social Anthology with our guest poet Matthew Hollis - free tickets still available!
December 16, 2024 at 3:05 PM
elcurwen.bsky.social
Vikki, thank you. Free tickets are still available for tonight's launch of the Anthology, co-hosted by me and @matthewmcsmith.bsky.social, featuring Matthew Hollis and our own talented @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social poets.
December 16, 2024 at 8:04 AM
elcurwen.bsky.social
For @brokenspinearts.bsky.social #CrunchThePoem #PoemsAbout here is a small poem borrowing words from a poem by @alanparry83.bsky.social.
December 13, 2024 at 4:02 PM
elcurwen.bsky.social
Coming next month - #TheWhiskeyTree, a collection of extraordinary poems, brought together by @brokenspinearts.bsky.social. More details to follow.
December 8, 2024 at 5:39 PM
elcurwen.bsky.social
Exciting poetry post just arrived on the doorstep- the new translation of 'The Seafarer' from Matthew Hollis, with extraordinary photographs by Norman McBeath.
A book cover, title the Seafarer, translated by Matthew Hollis, photographs by Norman McBeath. Cover photo is a white wave breaking on dark space. Photo by Norman McBeath of a piece of driftwood that looks like a human shape climbing from the shore.
December 5, 2024 at 11:36 AM