Lorna Callery-Sithole is an award-wining, working-class, multidisciplinary, Renfrewshire-based poet, visual artist, performer, and educator as well as being the proud mama of three beautiful Zimbabweegies.

She has published three poetry collections; Pigeon with Warburtons (Speculative Books, 2019), Colour Theory (Hybrid Dreich, 2020) documenting her biracial family’s experiences of everyday racism, and Facing our Past; Shining the Light (National Trust for Scotland, 2020), examining the links between the Stirling Maxwells and enslavement in the Caribbean.

She is currently working on her forth poetry collection, Billboard Apocalypse, reflecting on life in a post Covid landscape amidst the Cost of Living Crisis. She regularly performs her work at venues across Scotland and will be closing the Paisley Book Festival 2023 alongside the Renfrewshire Makar, Shaun Moore. https://www.lornacallery-sithole.com

Twitter: @LornaCallery

Insta: @lorna_callery

Metets Store

[eftir Joan Eardley’s paintin ae the same name] 

bairnsang echoes 
up the close 
doon the road

pillar boax cheeks 
couldnae keep
damp oot 

newspapers linin 
puddle jumpers’
holy soles

hopscotch weans
jump chalk-marked
breid lines

ridd heedit lassie
sookin sherbitt lemons
chasin shaddas 

skinnymalink 
troubled tae hink
stuck in the daurk

his da spendin 
pay packet
two sheets tae the wind

sheets oan windaes 
tae block oot the sun 
nettin wiz a luxury 

wan cludgie fir aw
pitch black back court
black bag bin raiders

newspapers oan the wire 
wipe yer erse 
wi yesterday’s heidlines

East End tenements
black wi stoor
lookin slant

bare flairboards 
a bad smit  
lassies wi shaved heids

fitba in the streets 
thur wiz aye a laugh
tae be hud

but
who the hell 
wiz Betty?