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Guest Editor HELEN SIMPSON introduces her pick of poetry and prose on the theme of flying CHALLENGED to write a story or poem inspired by flying, you tackled things head on and at least half of you took the theme quite literally. One poem started, ‘Flying means so many things/Of course you require some form of wings.’ Well, you know, I’m not so sure that you do. Need actual wings, that is. But whether you do or not, this subject provoked a great feathery flock of stories where the central protagonist feels a prickling in her shoulder blades, an uncomfortable sprouting and burgeoning until at last, hey presto, a pair of plumed pinions bears her aloft. My reading memory stirred and for the first time in years brought to light E Nesbit’s Five Children and It with its grumpy sand-fairy Psammead who grants the five eponymous children a daily wish, one of which involves wings. They spend a day flying effortlessly over Kent, perching on plum trees to eat the fruit, and enjoying a stolen picnic at the top of a church tower. Tales involving winged protagonists can of course stay at this level, magic yarns often delightful in themselves but leading nowhere in particular. A deeper treatment of this subject would probably involve some sort of exploration, however playful, of the many areas for which flying can stand as a metaphor – for example, liberation, making love or running away. I was powerfully reminded of Fevvers, the enormous winged cockney music-hall artiste and heroine of Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus, her wings ‘a polychromatic unfolding fully six feet across, spread of an eagle, a condor, an albatross fed to excess on the same diet that makes flamingos pink.’ Fevvers’ wings unfurl when she reaches puberty, and the good-hearted prostitutes who have raised her weep for pleasure, taking her to be the pure child of a new age in which no women will be bound to the ground. For the complete essay, and for Helen's full selection of poetry and prose on the theme of horror, read issue 27 • Subscribe! |
 Read a short story chosen by Helen Simpson: The Potato Cellar by Jane Wood  |
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For more on HELEN SIMPSON, go to www.contemporarywriters.com |
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