Ceinwen E. Cariad Haydon
Ceinwen E. Cariad Haydon lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. She writes short stories and poetry. She has been widely published in web magazines and print anthologies. These include Fiction on the Web, Literally Stories, Stepaway, Flashback Fiction, Ellipsis, The Cabinet of Heed, Three Drops from the Cauldron, Snakeskin, Obsessed with Pipework, The Linnet’s Wing, Blue Nib, Picaroon, Amaryllis, Algebra of Owls, The Lake, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Riggwelter, Poetry Shed, Southbank Poetry, Smeuse, Bandit Fiction, Atrium, Marauder, Prole, The Curlew, Dodging the Rain, The Galway Review, Confluence, The Foxglove Journal, Barren Magazine, Selcouth Station, Nine Muses, Ofi Press, Reach, Peeking Cat, Boyne Berries, Porridge Magazine and Dawntreader. She was Highly Commended in the Blue Nib Chapbook Competition [Spring 2018] and was shortlisted for the Neatly Folded Paper Pamphlet Competition, Hedgehog Press [October 2018], won the Hedgehog Press Poetry Competition ‘Songs to Learn and Sing’. [August 2018]. In 2019, she is proud to have poems included in the ‘Planet in Peril’ anthology [Fly on the Wall Press] and the ‘Bollocks to Brexit’ anthology [CivicLeicester]. She has an MA in Creative Writing (Newcastle University, 2017), and she is now developing practice as a creative writing facilitator with hard to reach groups. She believes everyone’s voice counts.
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Shipwrecked Anchor
barnacles seal your metal curves
freighted on the seabed under weight of water
strands of colour-muted seaweed
washed by waves in percolated light
and sluiced by currents
tangle fronds upon your thrust
your rusted arrowed spear
fish blow bubbles turn and twist
ballet between your old tines
where I stay skewered
freighted on the seabed under weight of water
strands of colour-muted seaweed
washed by waves in percolated light
and sluiced by currents
tangle fronds upon your thrust
your rusted arrowed spear
fish blow bubbles turn and twist
ballet between your old tines
where I stay skewered
Commentary
Ceinwen on "Shipwrecked Anchor":
I don’t want to dissect the poem since I believe that once a piece is published it is ‘out there’ and must speak for itself (and have an independent relationship with each of its readers). In a sense, it is like a young person going out into the world and establishing her independence; parental interference is redundant and potentially destructive. However, I am very happy to explain the context from which my poem arose.
Shipwrecked Anchor was initially conceived from notes that I made during a poetry workshop run by the poet, Kris Johnson. She led us to engage with ideas about anchoresses, and anchors. We also read excerpts from Annie Dillard’s Holy the Firm, (I went on to read the full text). Following the session I considered ideas of attachment, both healthy and unhealthy forms, with a specific focus on female experiences. In response, I wrote a small number of poems. All explore psychological landscapes, material circumstances and the interplay between power and impotence in an implied gendered context.
In my poetry I am concerned with women’s lives, the stories so often ignored in ‘history’. My reading includes confessional poets such as Sharon Olds and Anne Sexton, but I also love the work of Mary Oliver and Elizabeth Bishop who filter experience through Emily Dickinson’s slant lens. I don’t intend my work to be polemical but try to ease open doors and air neglected spaces. During my MA course I was taught by Tara Bergin and Jake Polley, two inspirational but very different poets. They both encouraged students to identify places that we felt we should not visit and go there anyway. This is some of the best advice I’ve ever received.
I came to writing in 2014, when I was sixty-two years old, very much a late starter. Since then it has been my main endeavour and, with the pressure of time at my back, I need to write every day. Sometimes, in my eagerness, I submit work before it is ready, but I am attempting to improve my editorial awareness.
Assistant Editor Jason Bates on "Shipwrecked Anchor":
Ceinwen Haydon’s Shipwrecked Anchor is compact, calculated, and captivating. Anyone who has ever talked poetry with me knows that I am adamant about carrying the metaphor. Haydon does that beautifully here. Every word fits the metaphor. Every word is intentional and carries its own connotation. There is a melancholic elegance to the anchor becoming part of the sea, and the last line leaves me wondering what has held the narrator skewered to the ocean floor for so long? Haydon has done a masterful job of capturing the universal feeling of being surrounded by a comfortable sadness while also being held down by it. The reader is allowed to bring their own reasons. Allowed to apply their own story.
I don’t want to dissect the poem since I believe that once a piece is published it is ‘out there’ and must speak for itself (and have an independent relationship with each of its readers). In a sense, it is like a young person going out into the world and establishing her independence; parental interference is redundant and potentially destructive. However, I am very happy to explain the context from which my poem arose.
Shipwrecked Anchor was initially conceived from notes that I made during a poetry workshop run by the poet, Kris Johnson. She led us to engage with ideas about anchoresses, and anchors. We also read excerpts from Annie Dillard’s Holy the Firm, (I went on to read the full text). Following the session I considered ideas of attachment, both healthy and unhealthy forms, with a specific focus on female experiences. In response, I wrote a small number of poems. All explore psychological landscapes, material circumstances and the interplay between power and impotence in an implied gendered context.
In my poetry I am concerned with women’s lives, the stories so often ignored in ‘history’. My reading includes confessional poets such as Sharon Olds and Anne Sexton, but I also love the work of Mary Oliver and Elizabeth Bishop who filter experience through Emily Dickinson’s slant lens. I don’t intend my work to be polemical but try to ease open doors and air neglected spaces. During my MA course I was taught by Tara Bergin and Jake Polley, two inspirational but very different poets. They both encouraged students to identify places that we felt we should not visit and go there anyway. This is some of the best advice I’ve ever received.
I came to writing in 2014, when I was sixty-two years old, very much a late starter. Since then it has been my main endeavour and, with the pressure of time at my back, I need to write every day. Sometimes, in my eagerness, I submit work before it is ready, but I am attempting to improve my editorial awareness.
Assistant Editor Jason Bates on "Shipwrecked Anchor":
Ceinwen Haydon’s Shipwrecked Anchor is compact, calculated, and captivating. Anyone who has ever talked poetry with me knows that I am adamant about carrying the metaphor. Haydon does that beautifully here. Every word fits the metaphor. Every word is intentional and carries its own connotation. There is a melancholic elegance to the anchor becoming part of the sea, and the last line leaves me wondering what has held the narrator skewered to the ocean floor for so long? Haydon has done a masterful job of capturing the universal feeling of being surrounded by a comfortable sadness while also being held down by it. The reader is allowed to bring their own reasons. Allowed to apply their own story.