Clew<\/strong><\/p>\n I<\/p>\n It turns out you can get lost anywhere. II<\/p>\n Of course I know there are places <\/p>\n Bernadette McAloon<\/a>\u00a0was born in County Durham. Her poems have appeared in various online and print publications. She has been placed as runner up in the Mslexia poetry competition and winner of the Vorse Scribben Basil Bunting Award. She is currently a PhD researcher at Newcastle University. For the last fifteen years she has worked as a children\u2019s therapist in educational and social care contexts.<\/p>\n Bernadette McAloon<\/a> is the winner of 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":" Clew I It turns out you can get lost anywhere. English garden, broad daylight, walk into a maze; find yourself, midlife, circling your childhood years….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[510,422],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/archive.nclacommunity.org\/content\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2426"}],"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=2426"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/archive.nclacommunity.org\/content\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2428,"href":"http:\/\/archive.nclacommunity.org\/content\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2426\/revisions\/2428"}],"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=2426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.nclacommunity.org\/content\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.nclacommunity.org\/content\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nEnglish garden, broad daylight,
\nwalk into a maze;
\nfind yourself, midlife,
\ncircling your childhood years.
\nAn improbable spool of wool
\nriddling the branches of a cedar
\ncould be considered a clue:
\nMinos, dance, Ariadne, bull.
\nYou might assume you know
\nwhere this yarn begins
\nand ends. Spinning,
\nyou could turn back.
\nUnravelling, you might think again.<\/p>\n
\na girl shouldn\u2019t go.
\nBut on nights like this
\nI can\u2019t resist spinning a line
\npast the abbess,
\nher head pure as an orchid
\ngrowing from a worn-out habit.
\nAnd yes, I know
\na girl should never
\npresent at altar,
\nhands open and human,
\nhooves visible and cloven
\nbeneath the red rag of her dress.<\/p>\n