Event
Southend Poetry Group 6th October

Bio
Katrina Naomi is the Brontë Parsonage Museum’s first writer-in-residence; a pamphlet, ‘Charlotte Brontë’s Corset’ was published by the Brontë Society in April 2010. Her first full collection, ‘The Girl with the Cactus Handshake’, for which she received an Arts Council England writer’s award, was published in November 2009 (Templar Poetry). Katrina was shortlisted for the 2009 Bridport Prize and was runner-up in the Poetry Society’s 2009 Stanza Competition. She won the 2008 Templar Poetry Competition with her pamphlet ‘Lunch at the Elephant & Castle’ and recently received a Hawthornden Fellowship. Katrina was brought up in Margate and lives in south London. www.katrinanaomi.co.uk

Poem

Charlotte Bronte’s Corset

I’m sorry Charlotte for this disservice.
Of course, your corset is discoloured,
these padded cups no longer coral pink.
Strips of whale plunge the depths
of your bodice, the slightly rusty metal
strip grips from breastbone to wasp-waist.
I feel like a tabloid reporter, sniffing around
the armholes of your life.
                                           I once wore a corset
in my late teens, black PVC over a black skirt,
fishnets and suede stilettos. I didn’t know
a lot of things then, hardly knew who I was,
had barely heard of you. So what gives
me the right to go searching through
your smalls, to lay out your stays
in the library?
                        I don’t have so many scruples,
can’t be tight-laced. I need to breathe
the length of my lungs. And I do know
I’ve made your tiny body so much larger
than in life. Forgive me, my waist
is so very different to yours.