Party Piece

Anna Woodford

£5

978-1-906613-07-5

Anna Woodford lives in Newcastle upon Tyne. Her pamphlet ‘Trailer’ (Five Leaves, 2007) was a Poetry Book Society Choice.

She has received a major Leverhulme Award, an Eric Gregory Award, an Arvon/Jerwood Apprenticeship, a Hawthorden Fellowship and a residency at the Blue Mountain Centre (New York). She has a PhD from Newcastle University.

'Many of the poems in Anna Woodford's Smith/Doorstop collection Party Piece open out almost imperceptibly from their domestic premisses into a subtle exploration of the tension between stability and cliche. She is uneasily aware in "Big Bed Scene", for example, that real feeling may have slipped into staginess, even though "we were great/ together the way/ I remember it", while in "Fresco" she is afraid that the familiar icons of Florentine art have blinded her to the holiness of the heart's affections closer to home.'

— The Times Literary Supplement

THE TREE

When I raise my foot
off the ground, in line
with all the other women
and the couple of men,
I am expressing myself
simply as a woman
with a raised foot.
When I raise my hands
above my head, they are
swept up in a movement
of hands:  of wrists and
of fingers.  I hold
my position on an un
equal footing in the yoga
group.  At the far
corner of the room, shoes
cool their heels, our coats
are left hanging
while we turn – in our minds’
eyes – into trees.  We are
posturing as a forest
together though December hard-
hits the window, our right
knees are unbending, our green
fingers are budding.  The odd
rumble from a trunk, a
tumbling foot reveals
the nature of this spot.
We are only human, it is
written all over our faces.
As a tree, I make a
good woman standing
on one leg.  I know
what I must look like
and I’m happy with that.

– Anna Woodford, from 'Party Piece' (2009)