Amy Kinsman
immolations
you fell in love with the fireman’s daughter,
and i’m sorry for your misplaced faith.
this will protect you no more
than sigils traced on playing fields
by children running through the mist.
(this is a harsh place.
in summer the moors burn.
everything on foot turns to the water,
collects in the reservoir, live debris,
and the earth churns up blackened bones
that crumble to ash in your hands:
the smallest of femurs; neat little skulls
set with milk teeth,
but it’s winter’s bite that’s deepest.)
do you remember our bare legs pink in the frost
how every snowflake scalded our skin?
or the day we were turned back by panicked teachers,
melting plastic reaching our nostrils
slower than burning flesh?
(a man rises at dawn
with divine calm
and walks onto oldham edge,
with a carton full of petrol
and a pack of cigarettes.
his eyes burst like yolks,
run down his face as tears.
he takes his medication --
does not even scream.)
it was so cold then,
huddled together like sheep,
your hands clutching for warmth,
ice on every breath, bodies grown numb,
and year on year that feeling returns:
i am frightened of who we are in winter.
i am frightened of what we will burn.
and i’m sorry for your misplaced faith.
this will protect you no more
than sigils traced on playing fields
by children running through the mist.
(this is a harsh place.
in summer the moors burn.
everything on foot turns to the water,
collects in the reservoir, live debris,
and the earth churns up blackened bones
that crumble to ash in your hands:
the smallest of femurs; neat little skulls
set with milk teeth,
but it’s winter’s bite that’s deepest.)
do you remember our bare legs pink in the frost
how every snowflake scalded our skin?
or the day we were turned back by panicked teachers,
melting plastic reaching our nostrils
slower than burning flesh?
(a man rises at dawn
with divine calm
and walks onto oldham edge,
with a carton full of petrol
and a pack of cigarettes.
his eyes burst like yolks,
run down his face as tears.
he takes his medication --
does not even scream.)
it was so cold then,
huddled together like sheep,
your hands clutching for warmth,
ice on every breath, bodies grown numb,
and year on year that feeling returns:
i am frightened of who we are in winter.
i am frightened of what we will burn.
Commentary
Amy on "immolations":
There's a few important bits of personal information that went in to this poem. One, that I live not very far at all from Saddleworth Moor - for those not familiar with that kind of geography, it's a kind of wild, hill landscape that is bitterly cold, snowy and often impassable in winter, and, because of the peat in the soil, is prone to wildfires in the summer. There's something sublime and pagan and deeply entrenched in the cultural identity of the British North about that kind of moorland. Saddleworth Moor is also the burial place used by the Moors Murderers (with at least one missing body still up there). Two, I have a very complicated relationship with fire. My father was a firefighter, so I grew up incredibly frightened of it but also kind of mesmerised by it. Three, a guy really did self-immolate on my secondary school playing fields in 2009 and was found by one of the P.E. teachers when she went up ahead of a cross-country class. It's a thing that's haunted me for ten years. I suppose this poem is about morbid fascination and the limits of our individual understanding and control - the enormity of earth, the power of fire and the complexity of human emotion.
There's a few important bits of personal information that went in to this poem. One, that I live not very far at all from Saddleworth Moor - for those not familiar with that kind of geography, it's a kind of wild, hill landscape that is bitterly cold, snowy and often impassable in winter, and, because of the peat in the soil, is prone to wildfires in the summer. There's something sublime and pagan and deeply entrenched in the cultural identity of the British North about that kind of moorland. Saddleworth Moor is also the burial place used by the Moors Murderers (with at least one missing body still up there). Two, I have a very complicated relationship with fire. My father was a firefighter, so I grew up incredibly frightened of it but also kind of mesmerised by it. Three, a guy really did self-immolate on my secondary school playing fields in 2009 and was found by one of the P.E. teachers when she went up ahead of a cross-country class. It's a thing that's haunted me for ten years. I suppose this poem is about morbid fascination and the limits of our individual understanding and control - the enormity of earth, the power of fire and the complexity of human emotion.
Biography
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Amy Kinsman (they/them) is a genderfluid poet from Manchester, England. As well as being founding editor of Riggwelter Press, they are also associate editor of Three Drops From A Cauldron. Their debut pamphlet & was joint winner of the Indigo Dreams Pamphlet Prize 2017.
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