Menagerie

Menagerie is a collection of poems about animals, divided into three sections: water, earth and air. Some poems examine a creature from close-up, almost allowing the reader to see the world through the animal's eyes, while the poet is more present in other poems, looking on. The collection invites the reader to reflect on loneliness, love, mortality, and hope. Each poem is typeset with plenty of space around it, allowing it to breathe. With stylised illustrations by Amy Evans.
from "Octopus Tank, Torbay Aquarium"

I saw a ribbon of starlings once – they rose

and fell in that same way, tied and re-tied Rome

in a bow, and I thought the knot at their centre

must be God. Here is God again in this stranger,

the colour coursing her billow and flop like a weather map

crawling with storms.

Cheryl Pearson's first poetry collection, Oysterlight, was published by Pindrop Press in 2017. She is the winner of the 2016 Cheshire Prize for Literature and the 2017 Torbay Poetry Competition, and was Highly Commended in the Costa Short Story Awards (2017). She lives in Manchester and spends her free time in the Peak District where she can usually be found climbing hills or drinking beer.