Chrissy Derbyshire Profile


 Chrissy Derbyshire is a graduate in English Literature from UWales Cardiff, 2005.

She recently studied for her PGCE (post-compulsory). Her adopted city is Cardiff.

Mysteries (Awen 2008) is her first collection.

Read an interview with her here .


Chrissy performing at the Raconteur launch, Cardiff Stadium, April 2009

HARP



Old shapeshifting thing,

You still stand there singing my words,

Shaped rather like

This poem that describes you.

Now old as the dust floor,

Creaking from within – sounds of an ancient wood –

With thick strings loose and curled

Like spirals to the centre

That is, in the end, a tomb.

All flesh there has turned to dust

Many years beyond memory.

The stone has faded, fallen,

Been covered with earth and forgotten,

But pluck the timeworn strings

And some echoes remain.

Now she is pale as a green youth,

Trembling with the flowers of first poetry,

Tied with merry ribbons

And singing out birdsong in gardens.

Then I like to dip her in the well

And pull her out laughing

As the rivulets run down her may-scented body.

It harms her not –

Just means that she can play water music.

More often than not, she does.

She is a conch shell strung with the hair of sirens.

She sounds with the sound of otherworldly cries,

Of fishes leaping into pools

And of the mighty storm.

O storm-tossed singer!

I hold her like a sailor shipwrecked

When after months on a barren island

This harp washes onto my shore.

Though she makes no sound,

This driftwood skeleton,

Her voice swallowed by the sea,

Still I will weep with joy,

Run my hand over no strings

And play emptiness music to the stars.



copyright Chrissy Derbyshire 2009