Tag Archives: Judith Taylor

clarinet She’s a voice, they say but when did you hear a human voice sing such grace in baroque quintets and ragtime bands alike? lilt through the ornaments and lament with so much reason? glow like a low star then … Continue reading →

Abbeyhill I haven’t been anywhere, or done anything. When I had falling dreams, I fell out of some bright fairground ride towards this corner of the grass beside the toolshed. And there’s the wall with the honeysuckle gatepost I was … Continue reading →

Blue hat elegy (for Elizabeth) My blue hat was left on a train to Glasgow and never made it home, poor thing. I loved that hat though my boyfriend used to laugh at it and a friendly goat tried to … Continue reading →

Widower (after Su Shi, 1037-1101) Ten years dead: why is it only now I see her sitting the way she always did at the mirror, making-up her face as if I were taking her out somewhere? Separate worlds in the … Continue reading →

Siren Even my name makes you think of it. Sax-o-phone – machinery and base desire, in one. And all your fantasies of the low dives you hadn’t the word to get into hang around me like the scent of a … Continue reading →

From Didsbury to Coupar Angus The envelope was home-made, from wrapping-paper – Hunting Stewart tartan, if I remember – and the postmark was illegible, but I knew the careful hand it was addressed in. From Didsbury, to Coupar Angus. Letter … Continue reading →