Editorial Note by Max Wallis
If Mother exposed the violence of public scrutiny, Father turns inward, to a child’s gaze pressed against the glass of memory. There is a quiet pilgrimage here: three hours of nausea and games, the pylons and cats’ eyes transforming the motorway into a living conduit of connection.
Dunne captures the way children mythologise distance. Her imagery: pylons “passing electricity / to one another, like a secret” bridges what the law has broken. Even the landscape seems complicit in this fragile communication, the water towers breathing in and out as though keeping time with love’s endurance.
The poem’s final revelation is devastating in its understatement: the longed-for reunion mediated by “a translucent screen, and four prison guards.” Yet what remains is not despair but a small, steady faith in attention itself — the child’s noticing as an act of survival. Dunne writes with restraint and grace, transforming absence into illumination.
Dominique Dunne is a former Barbican poet and poetry producer for the Shake the Dust Festival at Southbank Centre. She has supported Kae Tempest, performed at Ronnie Scott’s, and delivered a TEDx talk on original writing. Dominique holds a BA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University and has taught poetry to both children and adults. Writing from personal experience on heartache and joy, she believes that ‘Poetry can bridge the gap between the personal and the universal.’ Currently, she works as a creative career coach, helping young people break into the arts.
