The Woman who Married the North Sea<\/strong><\/p>\n You know what they say about older men. He brought me trinkets: On our wedding night <\/p>\n Rachel Plummer<\/a> has had poems published in magazines including Mslexia, The Stinging Fly and Agenda. Rachel is a Troubadour prizewinner, winner of the Fenland Reed Ouse Washes competition, twice runner up in the Penfro Poetry Competition and placed third for the Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year. She is a recipient of the Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award for poetry. She has received a cultural commission from LGBT Youth Scotland to write a collection of children\u2019s poems based around LGBT retellings of traditional Scottish myths and stories.<\/p>\n Rachel Plummer<\/a> was placed 2nd in the 2016 Flambard Poetry Prize<\/a>. An anthology featuring more poems by 2016’s prizewinners is available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Woman who Married the North Sea You know what they say about older men. Experienced. He was a Viking; bold, black as a conger…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[422,509],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/archive.nclacommunity.org\/content\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2424"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/archive.nclacommunity.org\/content\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/archive.nclacommunity.org\/content\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.nclacommunity.org\/content\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.nclacommunity.org\/content\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/archive.nclacommunity.org\/content\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2425,"href":"http:\/\/archive.nclacommunity.org\/content\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2424\/revisions\/2425"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.nclacommunity.org\/content\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/archive.nclacommunity.org\/content\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.nclacommunity.org\/content\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.nclacommunity.org\/content\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nExperienced.
\nHe was a Viking; bold, black
\nas a conger eel. He’d been around, been intimate
\nwith the land’s soft edges, dipped his cold
\ntongue into the Skagerrak.<\/p>\n
\njellyfish scattered like spilled pennies
\non the beach at Portobello,
\ndelicately weed-wrapped plastic bags,
\nthe rotting carcass of a sperm whale, his foam
\nwhite beard to caress my toes.<\/p>\n
\nthe spray was thick as ambergris, the sand
\nfragile with worm casts.
\nI kissed his silvery pout.
\nAcross the sea the moon sank
\nbright as a wrasse at the Rhine’s mouth.<\/p>\n