Guest Poem by Maggie Brookes-Butt

Maggie Brookes-Butt's New and Selected poems 'Wish' is published by Greenwich Exchange in January 2025. It draws on six previous collections published as Maggie Butt, with the addition of new, bitter-sweet poems about being a grandmother in this dangerous and vulnerable world. Maggie is an ex journalist, BBC TV producer, creative writing academic and Royal Literary Fund Fellow. Her Penguin Random House historical novels are published as Maggie Brookes.

The Conundrum of Proportion

You try to force your arm into dolly’s dress
balance her hat like a pimple on your head,
crush her cardboard-box bed with your giant toddler
body, puzzled by further mysteries of perspective:
big or close; small or far away; the way your feelings
rear up huge as a tidal wave and threaten to drown
the world till reason is a whisper in a hurricane.
Beware adults who tell you to ‘keep it in proportion.’
They might also believe that ‘code red for humanity’
is small             and far away.