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Peterloo Poets, Poetry Publishers, Calstock, Cornwall

Late Love and Other Whodunnits
Poems by Diana Hendry

Late Love and Other Whodunnits is Diana's third volume of Peterloo Poetry, this time a joint publication with Mariscat.

Reading in Bed

Best bonus of the solitary life,
late hours, the stack beside the bed as good
as a new lover any night. But now
there’s all the courtesies to do, of bed-
side lights and sex and sleep and who’s the first
to shut up shop. Tonight it’s me. Your thrill-
er, Scorcher, clearly is. I snuggle in,
conscious that you’re close but miles away
(in Florida, to be precise). I lie
and listen as the turn of pages slows
down time. The hush-hush sound your thumb’s rub makes
is like the lap of waves that lulls me off,
tucked up in self while you, on night watch, learn
whodunnit, why and when and worlds roll by.

Diana Hendry grew up by the sea and has worked as a journalist, English teacher and tutor in Creative Writing at the University of Bristol. Her poetry has won a number of awards including first prize in the 1996 Housman Society Competition. From 1997-1998 she was Writer in Residence at Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary. She has published more than thirty books for children, including a junior novel, Harvey Angell which won a Whitbread Award in 1991. She also writes adult short stories, a number of which have been published in anthologies and read on Radio 4. She lives in Edinburgh.