Selina’s poetry has two publications and her poetry is published in a range of journals, including The Rialto, Under The Radar, Butcher’s Dog, Mslexia, Magma, and anthologies. Her poetry publications have also been shortlisted by Bad Betty Press, Verve Poetry Press and The Emma Press.
COLLECTIONS
Ferocious
Smokestack Books
Published in 2021
Order your copy here
The Visitors
Wild Pressed Books
Published in 2021
Order your copy here
POEMS
Jeera Sings
Filigree: Contemporary Black British Poetry
Peepal Tree Press Ltd.
Read below or buy here
The Quiet House
Magma Poetry
Read online
Yellow Iris
Mixed borders III Online Pamphlet
Read online (page 74)
In Protest: 150 Poems for Human Rights features two poems by Selina. You can find more info here and purchase a copy from Amazon or Waterstones.
LOOSE CHANGE
(From forthcoming ‘Silver’
Scheduled for publication in 2021 by Smokestack Books.)
With a forest of hair a man
sleeps through this concertina
of noise, a body-length away.
String ties his waist, cherries fall
from a bag. There’s no garden
at Victoria. He keeps to a separate
private hour. Pessa, flous, cash
swirl in coffee. Computers wait
thin as leaves. Ties for each
Monday to Friday and flowered
on Fridays. We pay and throw
all loose change
to the pavement. Who trusts
their life to a chattering station –
sleeps with the pigeon’s peck
of sushi, the tap of heels?
All hands are thought-filled.
His hair grows and knots and grows.
JEERA SINGS
(From ‘The Visitors’
Scheduled for publication in 2021 by Wild Pressed Books.
First published in Filigree, Peepal Tree Press)
The last bus to the sea left an hour ago.
Pricked stars. Is the dark darker when it’s cold.
Fine English rain sparks in the streetlight
people here are flat-boned and white
in lace-talk, laughing in snakeskin and pearls
and boys, tight with drink, grin and curl
their generous smoke through the streets.
Not in my face but deeper between
my cells, I’m fading with this attempt
at losing signals, at displacement.
It’s as I was told. Yet in the lanes somewhere,
searching cousins, I smell Little India
the tinfoil palace of every small town,
of every tumultuous city, the one
that singes the air with jeera and holds
Ganesh heavy with marigolds.
In the square, a sticky take-away
holds the locals in heat, but no-one escapes
from their roots. Everyone looks back and carries
their village on their back, to the next village.
FAR MOUNTAINS
Electricity sparks at my hands
from white desks and steel seams
as Lou giggles at time, plans
an uneven route whilst I sleep
we traded slammers
in a red-hearted bar
the un-told night she stayed over
and I listened to her shower
shots of cochineal, puyaa
sending the real sights to me
to this terminal sky-scraper
that sways with engineering
Lou approaches the Andes and still yet
I remember the print of feet when wet.
Selina Rodrigues Writer 