"The Thought Sits With Me" is Ruth Beddow’s debut pamphlet. Exploring what it means to dwell, daydream and obsess, the collection charts the various rupture points and upheavals of youth.
Opening in the crib of a suburban box room, the reader is ushered through a sprawling environment of primary school changing rooms, doctor’s surgeries, student halls and the home of a dead neighbour. Between these shifting walls, the mundane and the unimaginable become precariously intertwined, as physical terrain moulds to that of a changing body and restless mind.
Half-bleak, half-hopeful, this is a coming-of-age pamphlet which navigates the blurred lines of an ambiguous world. the thought sits with me is a candid contemplation dedicated to anyone who has ever felt weighed down by their thoughts, or decided to leave them behind.
Ruth Beddow
Ruth is a London-based, Midlands-born poet who also works in local government policy. She was shortlisted for the New Poet’s, Plough, Prole and Teignmouth Prizes in 2021. Her work has been published by Wild Court, The Poetry Village, Prole, Write Out Loud and Ink, Sweat & Tears, among others. "The Thought Sits With Me" (Nine Pens, 2022) is her first pamphlet.
Pipistrelles
First, the home
we barely remember:
lime lathered walls
and offcut carpet
laid hurriedly
by a neighbour;
the burglar
who strips the rooms
of every mundane treasure
but leaves your jelly limbs
bald halo skull
to dream behind the bars;
a paddling pool
a fear of wet
the lesson wasps are bad
and pipistrelles – good.
Pipistrelles
every night of July
flit between the conifer trees;
bi-bee-bam
every August noon
chimes by your driveway
halts
for soft serve and screwballs
then vanishes
in a beat –
choral
as your brummie voice calls
as you chase after it
through honeyed
suburban heat.
