Interview with Geraldine Paine

Geraldine Paine's collection The Go-Away Bird is available from the publisher, Lapwing Press of Belfast, at lapwing.poetry@ntlworld.com and I reviewed it here.  It contains her sequence "Leaden Hearts" , partly-found poems derived from convict tokens - these men and women, leaving their homes and families for transportation to the other side of the world, left tokens with last messages for loved ones:

There could be no flowers,
no grave, just this voice
left behind, barely heard.
Did he guess
family shame
would gouge out his name?
                                                       When
                                                       this you
                                                       see remember
                                                       me and bear me
                                                       in your mind Let
                                                       all the world say
                                                       what they whill
                                                       Don't prove To
                                                       me un kind

( Interview and more poems behind cut )

Links to more poems and information

Geraldine's page on the PoetryPF site - some poems and biographical information.

Amazon UK's page for The Go-Away Bird

The Basil Bunting Poetry Award - here you can listen to Geraldine's commended poem "The Creek"