Bex Hainsworth (2025) Circulaire.

What is a poem? I’m not sure. Although I’ve foolishly claimed to have written poetry. I’m not a poet. Bex Hainsworth is. I’m not sure how to explain that either.

Poetry is hard. A poet must make it look easy. All houses are haunted by women. ‘My grandmother’s semi-detached.

A familiar echo. Mundane made wonderful.

‘…a congregation of glass paperweights’

The obvious word here is a collection, not ‘congregation’.

But they are ‘arranged in constellation according to size and colour’.  

They plot an ending when ‘the house adjusts its skirts’.

The narrator ‘hoped that someone would visit me’.

She inhabits the house like countless other women before. But the house also inhabits her.

She is also learning how to inhabit her body. In Learning Curves, for example, ‘I am a beautiful mess, gorging myself/ on this, a beautiful abundance’.

Stretch: My skin is a dress, altered/

…I am allowing myself to take up space.

Circulaire

Reminders of the past present. ‘Ten years since I sat in the dust by the side/

…Not quite star-crossed…

Camping

It was the first time/ I knew love could be seen.

Wilderness is filled with whys in the shadow of why nots?

‘My therapist asks me to explain/

…the wilderness’.

No order to feelings. Ten years since you prayed. Lapsed. Tried to pray. With nothing to say.

Acolyte

The first time I yelled at God,/

…I was nineteen…

…the insomnia, the fear…

a bout of full-blown clinical depression.’

God unseated and you cheated.

Pebbles

A return to the naturalist Walrussey (first poetry collection) world of unskint knees and Oyster Bay.

‘Gentoo penguins are known to mate for life/

They present gifts of pebbles to their partners/

…love currency.’

Your dad’s present,

Yorkshire Puddings

Like poetry, ‘stand on the tips of my toes to see’.

‘No, he says, never open the oven to check. Don’t.  

 Genesis

‘In the warm kitchen, my mother

is chopping herbs on a wooden board…’

Learning Curve

Some days I stand in the shower/

…Like a horse sleeping in its stall.

The House of Peace (2020) has stones. ‘One for each of the million/children lost…’

‘and I see myself: seventeen,/

proto-poet, post catastrophe/

Séance

 ‘I sit in my bed/

with my journal…a planchette./

I speak out loud:

I am listening.’

We are listening. Read on.  

https://writtenoffpublishing.com/shop/p/circulaire-bex-hainsworth

https://www.abctales.com/forum/sun-2025-08-31-1820/circulaire-my-second-collection-poetry