Forward Prizes 2025 | An extract from Isabelle Baafi’s ‘Chaotic Good’
Posted by Isabelle Baafi
To celebrate the outstanding shortlists for this year’s Forward Poetry Prizes, we’re presenting a series of excerpts, interviews and insights into the writing process from some of the shortlisted poets, focusing this week on the nominees for Best First Collection. First up, an extract from Isabelle Baafi’s Chaotic Good (Faber), which we launched at the shop back in April – listen to the podcast of that event here.
Notes on Modality
Let’s redefine the word good. I have never given
blood, but I held a bird once until it died.
And a day is only as good as the questions it asks.
Yesterday was waterproof. I wrote nothing.
I can’t tell you who I was back then.
On the Ridgeway, I walk till dusk,
my fingers bloodless. It is easy to feel nothing.
When seen through a snowstorm,
every summit could be a depression.
I drop my glove in a ditch, abandon it too.
I want to call you and ask who gets the moral high ground
but I can bear no answers. I become a tomb to seal them in.
Abrasive and wild like the limescale in your kettle.
I go inside and write it all.
The light-starved ground, the clumsiness of ice.
When Wiltshire folds in on itself, I believe it.
I follow suit. I have been missing since I was born.
The only water for miles is a frozen pond
with ducklings that shudder at my footsteps.
The only garden is a woman who has broken her body
for more horses than men.
She offers me a seat by her fire, but I choose snow.
Snow keeps tracks to remind us where we’ve been.
When I return to the poem it is much changed –
harsher. It won’t answer to its name.
I omit much, but I cannot indulge it that.
I rein it tighter till it welts.
Some cruelties draw you in before you realise
what you’ve done,
like the cut that only hurts
once you know it’s there.
Chiaroscuro
ask me about my first crush the sand my brother piled on me
till i couldn’t breathe he gave me a hammer i didn’t use it but
i took its power son rise son threat son drinks the rain that
pools in collarbones mother’s hands raking my scalp
yesterday i pressed her sponge to the lake to clean it now the
lake is gone it is easier to lasso the moon than to help your father
lay down to die but what if the tomatoes never went bad what
if splinters are a warning to run i once found a ransom note in
my ear the face in the photo was mine i pawned everything
went to the drop-off point no one ever came to set me free give
me a bed with no crumbs in it pluck the fishbones from my
throat i forgot where i hid the matches and after that it
was easier just to live in the dark
Extracted from Chaotic Good by Isabelle Baafi, published by Faber Books. See all the books on the Forward Prize shortlists here.
