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the poet
Clare Best writes poetry, memoir, essays and libretti, often working with composers, visual artists, and other writers. She's published three full collections of poetry, plus various pamphlets and collaborative works. Her first full collection, Excisions, was a finalist for the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize. Clare’s multimedia project Breastless is a creative response to risk-reducing surgery owing to family breast cancer. Her memoir, The Missing List, was a finalist in the Mslexia Memoir Competition. Her most recent book of poetry is Beyond the Gate. Clare lives in East Suffolk, England, between Tunstall Forest and the sea.
the poems
beyond the gate
in memory of Sarah Everard
and all the others
scots pine and resin-scented air
out here
giant oak next to the path
we are walking
sycamore in sun in shade
holly crowding ragged elder
sweet chestnut spruce fir douglas fir
with us
field maple half-uprooted beech
out here walking
sorbus domestica the service tree
and elm rare elm
blackthorn black with sloes
with us out here
hawthorn hazel leaning ash
and we are walking
ivy juniper cherry poplar
copper beech and twisted willow
so many hornbeam so many birch
out here
stripped leafless by fine sleet
as we are walking
ranks of cypress sapling larch
branches creaking high above
wild plum and wild pear
we are we are
scarred black-leafed still with fruit
walking walking
Late fig
mid-
winter
gift
hangs
in thin air
after a fig-summer
when I learned to gorge
figs and goat’s cheese and honey
with bread rich as Christmas pudding
long summer of squeezing lemon moons
over fine fig-slices to make fig-flesh bleed then
feasting on it lemon-reddened after that I fear
disappointment but this single fig-surpassing fig
has fully perfect unsplit satin fig-skin purple-green
darkly tender I reach up and the gift gives slightly to
my carefully cultivated fig-touch does not resist a fig-
knife cutting it against white porcelain this precious
late fruit proves super fig-charged with intricate
red-pink and butter-coloured ravelled riches
and there at its centre a mysterious
shady hollow the very heart
of figness
You play the piano
as if you came into the world playing as if blackbirds
and nightingales will learn from you as if you don’t
care you can’t see as if snow has stacked fresh light
at every window as if the keys are green and red and
blue as if I renew your eyes by listening as if music
keeps you sane as if sleepless nights rose up and
invented the fugue as if Bach lives inside your head
as if to stave off blindness as if there’s no such thing
as trouble as if buzzards circle over you as if you will
never be silent as if devotion flows through arms and
fingers as if this is your final rehearsal as if it rains
as if the sun might shine again tomorrow as if you know
we have to live like this and so we do as if your playing
and our love can bind and heal this sorry world and you
Publishing credits
beyond the gate: The Friday Poem (June 2021)
Late fig: Beyond the Gate (Worple Press)
You play the piano: 14 magazine (2025)