Gail Ashton
Gail Ashton is a writer and editor of poetry, short
stories, and academic and popular works. Her publications
include a collection of poetry, Ghost
Songs (Cinnamon
Press, 2007) and six non-fiction books on poetry with
a biography of Geoffrey Chaucer forthcoming. She has
co-edited two poetry anthologies for Cinnamon Press
(Only Connect, 2007 and In
the Telling, forthcoming)
and edits a major literature series for Continuum.
She has also contributed poems and stories to many
anthologies and written numerous articles, chapters
and reviews for a range of publications including the
media. Gail reads and performs her work around the
UK, co-ordinates creative writing workshops and is
part of the triskelewrites mentoring and teaching collective.
Find out more at triskelewrites.co.uk or look us up
on the Cinnamon Press website.
Dunstanburgh Castle Ruins
Begins with ice-skald,
scree, scrimp of air.
Half-frozen
sheets of sea cold-shoulder
land and garotte beach,
bleach all to metal
frames of light.
Winds scour hills
to green-tinged bone, rivet
spar and rock.
Sky is star-bit this frost-
frilled night, and rigor morticed.
I came to north and east
unnoticed, to taste the salt
and bright, to track a gleam
of washed-up snow,
and feral me. The slip
is stone on wreck.
I pray the dark will hold.
I’ve far to go across the waste
and no one knows my name.
© 2008
Salt Publishing Limited 
