National Poetry Month : Lydia Unsworth,

 

BRESCIA

 

 

He walked down his valley into the modern city and said—

though whose valley is it and for how long do you, in order
 to claim it, need to have dwelled there? 

said without love there is only money
said without time, there is only the opposite of care 

he left the modern city and ascended

He faced West, East, North, South, and other sloppy approximations
made a long, low sound toward the other side of the earth

why are you here (in this sped-up dying) when within
the horn can still be felt the absence of the ibex? 

He said the compromise of life lies in the decision
to be killed by home or killed by elsewhere

in such ways our homes are weaponised 

land is filled – our mouths – the mouths of fishes
plop plop go their little dead bodies along the water 

another one, another one
at what point is it extraordinary? 

in the mountains also, children will learn the names
of the animals before they learn how to make them work

the atomisation of our relationships:

Look! we are in the office or on the plane or at the beach or counting bridges on our ageless motorways or working late or catching up on sleep or employing cleaners or forever emigrated 

they point at the things they love – is it not a form of love
to notice?

dying where you are born is a new type of failure
digging your heels into poisoned earth

is it stubborn to stay where one is, to stay (though you, too,
 once came) where you have made a home, to say this
is mine because I will breathe its broken air?

He will care for this broken mountain
and Her too – He has one
or she him, it’s hard to unpick—
They, in any case, will care

cuddle them to sleep, the poor dumb animals

an octopus is born and lives and will die in this puddle
of unscripted water 

I can’t tell you that
if it were up to me I would have done any better 

They will treat the waste, their waste
They will not treat your waste
you cannot bring any more waste, however well they do it
They will ensure a temporal nature to their expertise

in the city, I encounter a building called Crystal Palace –
note how its tiny name corresponds to my own
deep nation of sadness

the ruin reveals capitalism, exposes its flaws

the bus reveals tourists (so, still,
our captor holds us) – we photograph the hole,
the whole of us,
though not its wall

the ruin reveals time, which, if we remember, reveals care

the ruin reveals neglect (and we cannot say neglect is only something done to us)

He is named after the country, which is named after a calf
– new life, angry life –
but it does not mean ‘life’, he is not named after life,
only after a land of (living) calves

the ruin reveals a busload of people photographing it –
tell me noticing is a form of love 

(we must not use the flash) he tells us it is a form of love

we write in notepads about pain, some of which is felt and some only overheard – crucially this pain is framed as a series of solutions, solutions external to us, belonging elsewhere in the world, having been committed by external systems – we have only ever been victims, on the side of the victims

what is the critical mass of victims required
to induce power? 

He has created a community (a small, worthless community) here in the mountains 

I only ever encounter victims – there must be so many of us 

not that large communities are treated any better

are there telescopes nearby in the hills?

He said the landscape is alive, and He blew his horn at it

in the silence around the horn, we filmed
what in the filming became performance

In the lecture the following day, a boy said an academic also said the landscape is alive – and the buildings, all alive, lives of their own, they don’t care if they live or die, if they’re revamped or ignored, restored or reviled

 the immanence of sheep around the pylon

everyone agrees it is hauntingly beautiful – everyone agrees on the perils of aestheticizing

I have been a good mother

my daughter says my son won’t visit me when he’s older, he’ll be caught up in his own life, this bold four-year-old

and at the festival, from a campervan emerged a retired social worker and she said she’d love to see her grandkids more, but she’s all over Europe, creating opportunities for herself, seizing the day, I think it was

I am a good mother 

seizing 

sometimes 

seizing

He climbed the valley to the mountain and built a house and formed a life and breathed the air – He fights for the air and His right and the right of anybody leaving the city to climb the valley and live the good life (though not too many) to breathe clean air

one western country dumps sixty-five thousand tons of waste
in another western country and when the sky circles pink
around Crystal Palace we photograph the ethereality 

the shepherds are not happy, the sheep
eat the grass around the pylon

 

Forno d’Allione means furnace of the Allione, the river, alone, bringing all to it, the former hydro-electric plant, now abandoned, isolated, in a village called Isola, near Cevo, meaning hollow place, a village of 800 residents whose historical centre, now hollow, is also abandoned, and the Oglio, another river, polluted, ugly, the furnace,
the forno, the hill is poisoned, trees are growing through the temporary plastic shield, unsealing 

we will process the waste ourselves – my son will visit
when he wants something

a woman finds me walking and she scowls – I am sorry
I was brought here – but within my sorry I will also live –
I am walking to see what walking brings 

the clouds reveal the mountains, which continue to be
mountains, which despite their altitude provide a flatness
to the world, a backdrop, a healthy hinge

at the edge of the village is a crucifix, bent back like it is about to fling – Jesus dangles over the valley, impotent, the catapult of him held taut by engineering

after I had my babies I was craving thrownness – I left
the buggies by the hook-a-duck and put my body inside
the gyro swing 

there has to be trust – someone else must be responsible 

a crunching noise, Jesus cracks and kills – someone must be responsible

history is folded, holds infinite periphery 

he created a community, offered his obsessions to the fleeting he’d had flown in

his T-shirt said resistance is a form of love and love is a form of resistance

history unfolds, the soil is in big trouble,
new political discourses arise from the margins

there’s an artist asking you to love him all over the city – he wears a white lace mask and accepts enquires via email or DM

I was asked how I knew it was a man – I said a woman would have perfected her craft before she littered the streets with it

what do we do with the ruin, what it does to us
– can we still fall in love this summer?

 

 

 

 

Lydia Unsworth is a poet from Manchester, UK. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies including Dreaming Awake: New Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. She is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Place Writing in Manchester, looking at kinship with disappearing post-industrial architecture. She has 6 poetry collections and 4 above/ground press chapbooks, and has two new poetry collections in 2026, Stay Awhile (April, Knives Forks and Spoons Press) and This Now Extends to My Daughter (May, Blue Diode Press).

National Poetry Month : Lydia Unsworth,

Seasoning /

Liquid beds silently expand the way ivory stockpiles, the way the balloon wouldn’t burst however many times you bounced on it and I kept saying it would because,

as we would see, I was wrong. You keep bouncing anyway; only you can know what your body demands. The bluebell hangs its drooping head as if to focus on itself. The only treasure I’ll ever have is     the functioning of my 

is you until you’re gone. Raw leaves, even spinach―all worryingly wild.

The idea of letting anything inside, even light. Some like it raw, without any kind of seasoning. Plain rice absorbing water like tears let down into pillows in the night. The threat of anything but us trying to take back land.

Some people have booming elephant populations they’d rather not come in to contact with. Can’t sell them on because people without elephants are telling people with too many elephants what to do with their elephants:

it’s not on. I say do what your belly tells you, look in, not out. Firmly insert the magazine. The elephants can take care of themselves. Don’t be shy. Take what you need, not what you want.

Lydia Unsworth is the author of two collections of poetry: Certain Manoeuvres (KFS, 2018) and Nostalgiafor Bodies (Winner, 2018 Erbacce Poetry Prize), and two chapbooks: My Body in a Country (Ghost City Press, 2019) and I Have Not Led a SeriousLife (above / ground press, 2019). Her latest chapbook will be released by KFS Press in 2020. Recent work can be found in Ambit, para.text, Tears in the Fence, Banshee, Blackbox Manifold and others. Manchester / Amsterdam. Twitter: @lydiowanie