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Writer's pictureThe Red Wheelbarrow Poetry

The Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize 2021 Second Place


After Lockdown


Gail Dendy


Things will be different, then.

You will not be locked down in another town.

I will touch you as if I’d known you

centuries ago. As if we’d been drawn

as miniatures, twinned with a silver clasp.


Things will be different, then.

I tell you the sun will not set over Italy

when we travel there.

The gondolas in Venice

will always be waiting for us,

their prows like swan’s necks. Black swans.


Your skin will still be beautiful.

You will kiss me.

We will open windows, doors,

unlatch our shining lives.

Our children will fit perfectly in their beds.

The sun will have forgotten how to set.

Things will be different then.



GAIL DENDY was first published in the UK by Harold Pinter, with her South African debut being through Gus Ferguson’s Snailpress. She has eight collections of poetry to her name, the most recent entitled On Days Such as This (Botstotso, 2020). Accolades include winning the SA PEN Millennium playwriting competition and being shortlisted for the Thomas Pringle Award (Prose) as well as for the Sol Plaatje/EU Poetry Prize. She was longlisted for Short Story Day Africa, the Twenty in 20 Short Story Project, and received ‘Highly Commended’ in the UK Poetry Space Competition and the Dinaane Debut Fiction Award for an unpublished novel. Gail is passionate about dance and still does regular dance classes. Gail Dendy’s site can be accessed here.

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