Colette Sensier: One Poem

Colette Sensier

Colette Sensier is a young poet from Sussex, and has been writing for a good few years already. She has been a winner of the Foyles', Peterloo, and Tower prizes, and her poems have appeared both in print, in magazines such as Rialto and South, and online (at nthposition.com and pomegranate.me.uk, among others). She was featured in a recent Oxfam DVD promoting a young generation of poets, Asking A Shadow to Dance, and writes prose and reviews as well as poetry, although poetry is her first passion. She is currently in her final year of an English degree at King's College, Cambridge, where she has been active in the student writing scene.

Audience

We couldn’t stop talking when we met, could only shut
each other up with bed, the narrow tank making us soundless

as fish or astronauts, but the next morning all our good work
was undone, there was more to say. The next silence

was when we saw somebody fall, and the screech of cars
seemed to spin in rings away from what our ears could hear.

Afterwards, though, we screamed, and then talked more.
Each happening, for us, the hush of tragedy before the curtain

falls, before the rage of clapping starts, affirming, yes, yes,
but we are between the silences, we are together now, still talking.