I’m incredibly thankful to Nigel Kent for inviting me to write about a poem from my new collection, The Talking Stick: O Pookering Kosh which is due out this spring with Salmon Poetry Press, an Irish/International publisher. This collection contains poems, monologues, haibun and songs, mostly based on my Romany family. I have been working on them for over three years and many of them have been published before both online and in print and in my two pamphlets, Apple Water: Povel Panni and ‘they lit fires: lenti hatch o yog’ with Hedgehog Poetry Press.

‘a song to rest the tired dead’
im Celia Lane 

it is dusk 
she has come to wash the body
a table is set by the bed
a bowl of lavender water
clean muslin cloths
a white towel

       ‘too young for death’ she thinks as she removes all the clothing and…