Carl Griffin

Swansea, Wales

Carl Griffin is from Wales. His first poetry collection, Throat of Hawthorn, was joint winner of the Geoff Stevens Memorial Prize 2020 and was published by Indigo Dreams Publishing. His book-length collaborative poem about the impact of Covid-19 is forthcoming (from Against the Grain press) and was written with the help of poets from all around the world.

Date poem was written or completed 11th April 2020

Last Gad from the Herd

It wasn’t a field where I found

the British White, flat out, polled

all over. The cow was dead sound

slumped in a field’s atoll

of rushes and teasels, but for flies

triumphant on the sun-bathing

carcass. With a T-Shirt waving

over mouth, nose, but not my eyes,

I could smell the cattle leaf,

and there was no expletive accretion

that would stick between my teeth.

My phone recorded a completion

of wandering, in search of better:

the shrunken head, indignities,

being caught lifeless between trees;

nature’s hardy litter.