For the third event in the Wild Court Reading Series, we are delighted to welcome award-winning poet and editor Sarah Howe. Sarah will be reading and in conversation with poet and playwright Suji Kwock Kim. The event takes place on KCL’s Strand Campus, London, from 6.30pm on Wednesday 16th October. Click here for more details and to reserve your free tickets.

Ahead of the event, we feature a poem by Sarah below.

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On a line by Xu Lizhi

I swallowed a moon made of iron
you sang
the one who would stare from a fourth-storey sill
waiting for the brunt lick of dormitory fan

to come round again
pitched in the grimy glass
your still-young face electroplates with lunar currents
it clogs the sky

overtime dense as a dentist’s drill
you are shower-capped again in the assembly line
your eyes acid-etched circuitries
where fatigue’s fluorescent scrim settles like dawn

you float between
the rows ministering to never-ending components
their hands a flight of chrome
tongue soldered by thirst

you sway
could almost reach
the cartoon bulb twitching hot above your head
later in your bunk

among strangers hauled from sundry provinces
who fart like dogs in their sleep
you write down a line about the screw that fell
with an unheard plink

to the factory floor
words I read on a screen that reels at my touch
and choke
then tap the next link

_{First published in HWAET!: 20 Years of Ledbury Poetry Festival, ed. Mark Fisher.}