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The Friday Poem on 02/08/21

We chose Kathy Pimlott’s darkly funny poem ‘The Baby in the Wardrobe’ because we love the way it takes an unlikely event and uses it as a point of departure to get wildly surreal. Is the baby real? What does the baby stand for? There are more questions than answers in this poem, but the gorgeous mix of horror and humour make it a splendid ride.

The Baby in the Wardrobe

Do you remember the story of the baby in the wardrobe, 
its desiccated body wrapped in newspaper? How the baby 
was decades old but the newspaper was last week’s edition?

This is my story. The baby is dead but I bring it fresh news, 
re-wrap it in editorials, ads, crosswords with undiminished 
tenderness, newsprint smudging my attentive fingertips. 

I’m not trying to reanimate the baby with another bomb
or preposterous scandal, I’m just not ready to dispose of it, 
though it’s no use, something of a liability if truth be told 

and it’s pure fortune there’s no odour, pure fortune. 
Another thing about the wardrobe baby is how I was the baby
for a long time, until this body grew, enclosing baby-me. 

How did the baby die? Was it stifled, done to death 
because it cried and cried? I think it was abandoned
(though not quite, for here its brittle little body is) because

it wasn’t interesting. Some think all babies can be someone, 
Jesus or Astaire say, that conviction of grace. But let’s be honest, 
all that crying makes it nigh on impossible to get any work done.

Kathy Pimlott was born and raised in Nottingham but has lived for over 45 years in Covent Garden, specifically Seven Dials, home of the broadsheet and the ballad. Her first full collection is due out with Verve Poetry Press in Spring 2022. She has two pamphlets with The Emma Press, Elastic Glue (2019) and Goose Fair Night (2016). Her poems have been published widely in magazines and anthologies and, most recently, as one of 20 chosen for the Poetry Archive’s Now! Wordview 2020 Collection.

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