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Rebecca Goss
© Natalie J Watts
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the poet
A poet, tutor and mentor who lives in Suffolk, Rebecca Goss is the author of four full-length poetry collections and two pamphlets. Her second collection, Her Birth, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2013 – while in 2015, she was shortlisted for both the Warwick Prize for Writing and the Portico Prize for Literature. Rebecca is the 2022 winner of the Sylvia Plath Prize, and her newest collection, Latch, was published by Carcanet in 2023.
the poems
The Hounds
It’s as if something
calamitous is coming.
Their lament
rising across fields,
its claim on the dawn
keeping all the birds silent.
I want to know what stirs them,
the force of this pack.
What causes them to stand,
muscled frames trembling,
throats full of baleful song.
I am wakeful, rapt
and disrupted, their bays
sonorous against glass.
Should I slide the thin pane,
push my upper body
into emerging light
let them scent out my sex,
and tell them
we are all afraid.
O this night, this bidding,
claws at the latch,
pure thunder of them running,
my mouth opening
to the cool
and agitated air.
At the Party I Shadowed Susie
who was happy to slip away walk with me into the back field
where I drank her 17-year-old wisdom could look at her
hair the opposite colour of mine her blue jeans convincing
myself my twelve years were not an issue both of us plucking
at grasses when we got almost to the oak we ventured back to
the adults neither of us missed I lost Susie in the drunken stir
of my parents’ garden until night got ready to flood the party
I thought I might go in search of her or the cats so went to
the furthest barn and in the black that had rolled inside I saw
Susie being held by Richard the boy I’d ignored because his
punky clothes confused me now his left hand inside Susie’s
back pocket as they sought each other’s mouths air urgent
unfamiliar standing there considering myself betrayed waiting
until breakfast to utter it the sudden turn of my parents’ heads
curious to know what I saw my mother sensing something
flicker staring at her daughter so full of heat and blood and
questions
Gate
Here she comes,
hair a stream,
path home, dog’s
ears pricked
to the latch,
and I’m in the
garden, pear tree
spilling, day of poems
behind me, hiding
my stored dark,
thinking
I must look old
and not extraordinary,
her skin the truest surface
wanting to kiss her
as she drops
her bag, turns,
every atom of her
near me, and I
make my slight
gesture, feel
the quickening.
Publishing credits
All poems: Latch (reproduced with gratitude
to Carcanet Press for its kind permission)
