be
yourself she said –
blowing smoke rings
above my head
later, I wrapped
mousy hair with
emerald silk
being her daughter
I want to keep
the smell
in
FRANKIE MULLEN is the co-founder of a socially North based creative and communications agency, dreaming up and making happen arts, enterprise and heritage projects and telling the world about places and people that deserve a shout out but don’t often get one. She studied for a MA in Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam. She is a big fan of her local book festival and regularly chairs events. Her long-form sequence poem ‘The Hill of Bodies/Cnoc na gCorp’ – inspired by the place on the West Coast of Ireland in Co. Sligo, where her mother grew up – was recently published in Apocalyptic Landscape (October 2024) edited by Steve Ely, published by Valley Press.
