Derry’s very own award-winning poet came back to the city for a once off poetry reading at the Verbal Arts Centre. Colette read from her latest collection The Full Indian Rope Trick and from her first collection The Heel of Bernadette.

Poems featured during the reading included “And They Call It Lovely Derry”, “The Beast”, “The Door”, “Device”, “Last Nights Fires”, “Pillar Talk “, “The Word” and the title poem from her latest collection “The Full Indian Rope Trick” which recently won the National Poetry award in the UK.

It was a delight to hear the work being read in the natural voice and rhythm of the writer herself and the large crowd got the chance to hear the work being put into context. Colette commented on how great it was to be reading in front of a home audience. She revealed that Derry has always been special to her and is the setting for much of her work and that this was the first reading she has done in the city. After the reading Colette stayed on for over an hour to talk to the audience and sign copies of her work. A moving night for all present.

The Full Indian Rope Trick

There was no secret
murmured down through a long line
of elect; no dark fakir, no flutter
of notes from a pipe,
no proof, no footage of it -
but I did it,

Guildhall Square, noon,
in front of everyone.
There were walls, bells, passers-by;
then a rope, thrown, caught by the sky
and me, young, up and away,
goodbye.

Goodbye, goodbye.
Thin air. First try.
A crowd hushed, squinting eyes
at a full sun. There
on the stones
the slack weight of a rope

coiled in a crate, a braid
eighteen summers long,
and me
I'm long gone,
my one-off trick
unique, unequalled since.

And what would I tell them
given the chance?
It was painful; it took years.
I'm my own witness,
guardian of the fact
that I'm still here.


Colette Bryce