Born in Cheshire in 1978, Jen Hadfield is half-Canadian, and studied creative writing at the Universities of Glasgow and Strathcylde. Her first collection, Almanacs, was published by Bloodaxe in 2005.
Anna Dickie found this short poem on Hadfield's blog, and sent it in because "it's based on such a lovely notion". I like the suggestion that the sunlight has something to do with wind - though speaking as a Lea, there's a whole lee/lea thing going on that I haven't quite got my head around yet. And it's probably only me, but the last line puts me in mind of a brilliant moment in Complicite's A Minute Too Late, where Marcello Magni makes a gas hob with his hand.
Every Blue Thing
if the teaching about the chakras is true
then every blue thing's a voice -
the monologue of the shady tarmac,
the shadow in the lea of each rock
a locket of speech to be broken and heard,
the speaking sky and the speedwell sea,
and in the night,
the sotto voce of the pilot light
JEN HADFIELD