This month’s poem by Iris Anne Lewis is titled ‘I make myself a skirt of fish skin’. It was first published this summer in Seaborne Magazine. Iris said: ‘It’s difficult to know where the inspiration for a poem comes from. In this case, the phrase ‘I make myself a skirt of fish skin’ popped into my mind and the rest of the poem flowed from that. Since childhood, I have been fascinated by fairy tales and legends and so it was natural for the poem to evolve into a tale of a mermaid, a chimaeric figure found in folklore about the sea. Many cultures have traditionally held rites of passage from childhood into maturity. In the poem, a girl is encouraged by family and the wider community to embrace the transition from adolescence into womanhood.’
You can read Iris’s poem by clicking here.
Somewhere Else Writers Group 