Heronless, poems by Sophia Argyris, published by Palewell Press

Sophia’s latest poetry pamphlet Heronless, is published by London-based Palewell Press in March 2025.

You can order a copy direct from Sophia, or through the publisher here: https://palewellpress.co.uk/bookstore/environment/hrnl/ (this is also available on amazon etc, but please order from the publisher or myself if you can).

 

Words about Heronless:

How to grieve for a dying world whilst still finding joy in its beauty? How to come to terms with the loss of a parent? These are some of the questions raised by Sophia Argyris’s pamphlet. The poems in Heronless evoke family, love, loss and a desire for connection between the realms of the human and the more-than-human. A dead mother becomes a moon jellyfish, a fox names the world, and a cave teaches us how to love.

Corinna Board, author of Arboreal (Black Cat Poetry Press)


This pamphlet is a stunning, beautiful expression of love, loss, the haunting of grief and memory, told to us by Argyris in a strongly themed, skilfully written, well-structured gathering of most interesting shapes, fractures and fragments. These poems are emotive, heartbreaking and at times devastating. Each poem is filled with pain and claims a piece of your heart.

Each of the poet’s experiences is bound to the natural world. Nature is integral, is the lens through which the poet attempts to name or process the overwhelming, inescapable massiveness of grief. These poems are neat, often gorgeously distilled acts of devotion. Argyris’ ghosts are forever bound with the birds, the trees, stars, stones and water. How do we bear these sadnesses that enter our hearts and never leave? Perhaps there is no answer to this question. At least there is poetry like this – these poems will remain, gentle as breath around you for a long time. Jane Burn, author of The Apothocary of Flight (Nine Arches Press)

 
Sophia Argyris' poems are spacious, loving and melancholy. These are writings of near-loss and actual loss, of nature and need; poised in the balance between air and earth.  Jo Bell, author of Kith (Nine Arches Press) & Boater: Life On England’s Waterways (HarperCollins)

After You're Gone - first published in Under the Radar Magazine

AFTER YOU’RE GONE

Your shirt hanging out to dry gesticulates

in the wind, waving its empty arms like wings.

Inside I’ve laid out olives oatcakes hummus

things I love that you will not eat, no cheese

no bread, no meat. Instead of our voices

there is only the hush of my feet on wooden

floorboards, a book to read, a cup of tea

the birds flapping in the tree above your shirt

now dancing loosely in the breeze.

I still haven’t hung the curtains

all those barbed hooks too daunting to approach.

Soon bats will come like tiny ghosts flying

in the face of early night so fast I’ll think I see right

through them to the dark, the stars.

The Bruising Stones - from 'How Do the Parakeets Stay Green?'

Published in my collection ‘How Do the Parakeets Stay Green?’ Indigo Dreams Publishing Limited

THE BRUISING STONES

Then I was a fish, sliding

my marbled body over 

the bruising stones

blue limbed pale and 

misted as Scottish mornings.

 

Later we sat a circle, fire

smoked our salmon skin

an adventure away from walls

rules, all things that

bewildered us.

Hot chocolate comfort wrapped 

in my numb fingers, thick and

semi-sweet as darkness. 

Your faces lit fire-glow 

between shadows.

 

You have scattered since

like feathered dandelion tops

migrating birds, those flocks

of geese we used to watch 

leaving each year.

 

I am living as a human now

fully grown, carving 

my life in stone buildings

searching for the ways

the words to stay in touch

with us when we were fishes.