New Irish Writing’s winning poems for July 2024
Agnieszka Filipek, the July 2024 winner of New Irish Writing poetry
Agnieszka Filipek is a Polish-born poet living in Ireland. Her work, in both English and Polish, has been published worldwide, and also translated into German, French, Persian and Chinese. Her poems have appeared in Crannóg, Channel, The Blue Nib, Dodging the Rain, ROPES Literary Journal, The Stony Thursday Book, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Amsterdam Quarterly, Lucent Dreaming, Local Wonders Anthology and elsewhere. Two of her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Typewriter
My aunt had an old typewriter
hidden in her closet. It was wrapped
in a big scarf she brought back from
the Arab Emirates. Apparently she was
a great typist, but I never saw her type
or wear that scarf. They were just there
in the bottom of the wardrobe. My cousin
and I would sometimes sneak into her
bedroom, take the typewriter out, place
a piece of paper in it and randomly start
hitting the letters. The ring of the bell
at the end of each line always made us
laugh and we’d quickly turn around
to check if someone was coming.
Provence
remember that summer when
we found an old box with dusty lavender
on the windowsill in that rented
room with a view in Provence
we threw it away
not knowing any better
in the morning as my foot
touched the white floor I saw
scorpions surrounding the bed
my screams must have woken
up the whole street
the housekeeper barged into the room
swept the scorpions off the ground
and threw them out the window
she waved her kitchen cloth at us
shouting something in French
none of us understood
then she pulled a box of lavender
out of the basket bin and put it
back on the windowsill with a smile
