‘…poetry is a way of happening, a mouth’—W.H.Auden

Riptide, by Amanda Bell

I lost it to strong currents; 

it slid over my cold knuckle

and got swept away before it sank

though I stood chest high 

among tall waves while you 

dived and dived to save it.

Every glint the sun hit 

seemed to strike its shape, as 

ebb jets carved the sand 

from underfoot, till we had to 

cede it to the tide, and leave,

quite naked for its lack.

No new gold ring could bond 

that me, that you, those strangers 

lost to time and circumstance.

Amanda Bell received an Arts Council Literature Bursary in 2020 to work on her new collection, forthcoming from Doire Press in autumn 2021, and a chapbook of haiku and photographs, forthcoming from wildflower poetry press. Her debut with Doire, First the Feathers, was shortlisted for the Shine Strong Award for best first collection in Ireland. Other publications include a haibun collection, Undercurrents (Alba Publishing, 2016), which won second place in the Kanterman Merit Book Award and was shortlisted for a Touchstone Distinguished Books Award; the loneliness of the sasquatch: a transcreation from the Irish of Gabriel Rosenstock (Alba Publishing, 2018); and The Lost Library Book (The Onslaught Press, 2017). Her YA novel was shortlisted for the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair 2020. She is assistant editor of The Haibun Journal, and a mentor with the IWC and Words Ireland. This spring she is the inaugural Writer in Residence in Harold’s Cross, in which capacity she has devised a course for lockdown, called ‘A Sense of Place: Discover Harold’s Cross through Creative Writing.’