Dido and Aeneas, by Claire Booker

The Trojan Hero Aeneas Tells Dido of the Trojan War, by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin (France) 1815

Dido and Aeneas

their lips flayed a river and her heart 
was an open mouth for a fish must love its hook 

and she revelled in the flick of the rod
but fear came creeping in 

when the sky shook its pockets for fresh notes 
and he found new eyes 

her crown became a scold’s bridle 
her feathers melted wax 

then tenderness sailed on the trade winds 
she unsheathed a sharp new lover 

crimsoned the world with her wrists

Claire Booker

Claire Booker lives in a small village on the south coast of England, surrounded by sheep and seagulls. She works as a volunteer in the local art gallery. Her poems have been published widely, including in The Ekphrastic Review, Mslexia and The Spectator. She is a four-times winner in The UK Poetry Society’s Members Poems Competition and won their Stanza Competition in 2023. She recently travelled to Bangladesh as a guest poet at Dhaka's International Writers Festival to receive a Kathak Literary Award. Her latest collection is A Pocketful of Chalk (Arachne Press), and her pamphlets are The Bone That Sang (Indigo Dreams) and Later There Will Be Postcards (Green Bottle Press).