poetry snapshots: gill learner

A worm updates itself

Never mind the Tree of Knowledge:
I'd sooner get my teeth into a book, or
better still a row - complete works
from long ago, not bleached or sized.
Give me the tender wrap of calves shaved thin,
a volume in a warm damp room, its spine
relaxed in fishy corrugations. I've delved
into the great minds of the past, chewed over
their hypotheses, digested fantasies
and left behind a dust sucked dry of thought.

But things are harder now: I crack
my head on plastic, slip on silicon.
Yet I'll survive - I found a way
to tunnel the soft underside of 0 and 1.


Published January 2009 in Acumen 63.

Gill Learner lives in Reading and began writing poetry in 2001. She loves reading to an audience, has been published widely and was awarded the Poetry Society's Hamish Canham Prize 2008. Her first collection, The agister's experiment, is forthcoming from Two Rivers Press.

http://www.poetrypf.co.uk/gilllearnerpage.shtml