Helen Laycock
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helenlaycock.bsky.social
Helen Laycock
@helenlaycock.bsky.social
2.2K followers 840 following 1.2K posts
Poet 3x Pushcart & Best of Net nominations.
Winner of Black Bough Poetry Chapbook contest, shortlisted for Broken Spine Arts Chapbook contest. Book of the Month at The East Ridge Review.
Children’s fiction & short stories.
https://linktr.ee/helen.laycock
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helenlaycock.bsky.social
This is a #winter poem which was written without using any winter words! A really great challenge from @matthewmcsmith.bsky.social over on X.

#poetry #poetsofbluesky #blueskypoets #skypoets #poetrycommunity
December 10, 2025 at 9:57 AM
helenlaycock.bsky.social
Feeling festive at The Candyman's Trumpet @dreich.bsky.social. 🎄

Here are my pieces, but there are so many more to enjoy for free. Just look at the line-up!

Thanks to Jack Caradoc for a wonderful curation of #Christmas and #winter #poetry
❄️❄️❄️

#skypoets #poetsofbluesky #blueskypoets
December 1, 2025 at 12:04 PM
helenlaycock.bsky.social
Thanks, Paul, for the #promptcombo #OnRoofs
@thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social

Here's my contribution.

#poetry #poetsofbluesky #blueskypoets #skypoets #winter
November 24, 2025 at 12:06 PM
helenlaycock.bsky.social
‘They call her Winter’

My chilling interpretation of the coldest season of them all…

❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️

#poetry #blueskypoets #poetsofbluesky #skypoets #poetrycommunity #poetrylovers #winter
November 12, 2025 at 10:39 AM
helenlaycock.bsky.social
Still buzzing from a wonderful weekend in Dublin where I was invited to read at Rathfarnham Castle for the launch of Issue V of the beautiful #poetry journal ‘The Storms’.
Huge thanks and big love to Damien @eatthestorms.com and @rhonagreene.bsky.social who made it happen. 💙💙💙
November 6, 2025 at 10:21 AM
helenlaycock.bsky.social
The #spokenword version of a poem written on the theme #paranormal/#supernatural

🖤🖤🖤

#poetry #poetsofbluesky #skypoets #blueskypoets #poetrylovers
October 28, 2025 at 2:24 PM
helenlaycock.bsky.social
Here's a recent poem which I have shared on Instagram (under @poetnell).

Thought I would share it here as well.

Sound on.

#poetry #spokenword #poetrycommunity #poetrylovers #blueskypoets #skypoets #poetsofbluesky
October 23, 2025 at 3:23 PM
helenlaycock.bsky.social
A second piece which explores the act of creating a #poem.

‘I AM NIGHT-FISHING’

#poetry #poetsofbluesky #skypoets #poetrycommunity
October 21, 2025 at 9:17 AM
helenlaycock.bsky.social
A poem about the act of writing a poem...

This is 'BLACK LINE ARCHITECTURE'.

#poetry #poetrycommunity #poetrylovers #writing #skypoets #blueskypoets #poetsofbluesky
BLACK LINE ARCHITECTURE Poets’ mouths bleed from cracking open rocks with broken teeth, seeking white lines of metaphor in the fissure, not fossils of cliché. They see skylarks and name them freedom. Call their song riverlight. Quill their bones. Settle on ‘blue’ for ‘blue’. Like ginger footsteps poem-hunting, a poet’s tongue pitter-patters while hand on shoulder, a shadowed Muse threads silver sibilance into the voice of dusk. That creak is from contorting skulls, brains muscular eels writhing into the darkest holes, never afraid of drowning. Helen Laycock
October 14, 2025 at 9:26 AM
helenlaycock.bsky.social
Had time today to compose something for #poemsabout #ImperfectMe...

A fascinating subject, inspiring so much #poetry, plus introspection, I'm sure.

(Apologies, @alanparrywriter.co.uk Posting a little early - 4 hours before midnight - as tomorrow is busy)

@thebrokenspine.co.uk
FORGERY Outside, too soft like a berry, easily bruised or pulped underfoot, ultimately misshapen and unrecognisable as fruit. Inside, too much water, rising like a tide, eyes holding surface tension inside a quiver-rim of skin. The wash recedes, leaving hollows as it long-trawls dregs in the comb of emotion, and deposits them thick at every shore, clogging words to soggy syllables. Waterlogged tissue falls apart. Becomes throat-mulch. And when he says you look sad, and asks why, you feel sadder, fumbling for the frayed thread, while feeling a wet whip flailing you, whittling you to the imperfect figure you have made of yourself. Helen Laycock
October 9, 2025 at 5:11 PM
helenlaycock.bsky.social
A poem on the theme #mystical.

This is ‘RECOVERY’. 💚

#poetry #poetrycommunity #poetsofbluesky #skypoets #forest #grief
October 7, 2025 at 9:16 AM
helenlaycock.bsky.social
Submissions are now open for @afterpoetry.com
@markantonyowen.com, a lovely opportunity to showcase #ekphrastic or ‘after’ #poetry.
Here’s one of mine that was featured earlier this year.
October 6, 2025 at 10:22 AM
helenlaycock.bsky.social
For this first #PoetryTheme initiated by @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social,
here's my #AMPHIBIAN poem. 🐸

#poetry #poetsofbluesky #blueskypoets #poetrycommunity
September 30, 2025 at 12:15 PM
helenlaycock.bsky.social
Thank you to @matthewmcsmith.bsky.social for highlighting my poem ‘Blush’ as part of my #SilverBranch feature at @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social

🦩🦩🦩

Here’s the link to the full feature: www.blackboughpoetry.com/helen-laycoc...

#poetry #poetsofbluesky #blueskypoets #poetrycommunity
September 30, 2025 at 7:36 AM
helenlaycock.bsky.social
If you have come across my #SilverBranch feature
@blackboughpoetry.bsky.social
you may now be familiar with my poem 'HARE'.

@matthewmcsmith.bsky.social
and I thought it might be interesting to enlighten you about the process involved in writing it, so here's the poem and my technique. ✍️

#poetry
September 21, 2025 at 1:47 PM
helenlaycock.bsky.social
Just remembered this piece which might just fit #PoemsAbout #SilentPlanets

Thank you, @alanparry83.bsky.social
@brokenspinearts.bsky.social
September 19, 2025 at 8:17 AM
helenlaycock.bsky.social
'STUNNER'
A poem written on the theme of #invertebrates for #toptweettuesday

#poetry #poetsofbluesky #skypoets #blueskypoets #poetrycommunity #poetrylovers #jellyfish
September 17, 2025 at 11:34 AM
helenlaycock.bsky.social
Delighted to finally share the news I have been saving that the lovely @rhonagreene.bsky.social and Dami @eatthestorms.com have chosen my work to appear in Issue V of the fabulous Storms Journal alongside a wealth of wonderful poetry.

#poetry #poetrycommunity
August 27, 2025 at 10:17 AM
helenlaycock.bsky.social
A poem about my mother’s death.
The theme was #breathless.

#poetry #poetrycommunity #skypoets #poetsofbluesky
#grief
#mother #death
August 26, 2025 at 4:52 PM
helenlaycock.bsky.social
Last week’s #poetry theme over on Top Tweet Tuesday was #bodies.
I already had several (a few of which had been recently published), but I wrote a new one especially.

If you suffer from cramp, you might recognise this excruciating pain! 😩

#poetsofbluesky #blueskypoets #skypoets #poetrycommunity
August 25, 2025 at 2:02 PM
helenlaycock.bsky.social
Might ‘Frame’ fit the bill?

This COLLECTION OF POETRY explores the gallery of humanity, stripped and on display, all its flaws laid bare...
It's about all of us,
for we are all a little bit broken.
UK link: www.amazon.co.uk/Frame-Helen-...
(but available worldwide)
July 25, 2025 at 7:35 AM
helenlaycock.bsky.social
I wasn't sure about posting this piece for #PoemsAbout #Glamour. It is written from the POV of a child in Gaza and deals with the upsetting reality of living through the harrowing turmoil there.

What that child might wish for now...

@alanparrywriter.co.uk
@thebrokenspine.co.uk

#poetry
VALUATION A long time ago, I made a glittery wish: for a glamorous dress which shivered with sequins as bright as fish scales; I would be covered in tiny suns, as beautiful as Mama who reflected so much light. Red spikes split the night; I wish they were fireworks but my bruised brain slams against bone at every bang; they say you eventually stop hearing familiar sounds – the ticking of a clock, a train at the end of the garden, but I jerk at every startling blast, electrocuted by fear. The air is thick in the tent – a meld of heat, sewage, gunpowder and blood. I taste them as my belly sinks. I am turning to paper. Outside, tanks are crawling – giant insects with probing proboscises, looming from the dust. Soldiers teem like bacteria. Infection. We are all part of a failing body. All the shapes are rubble and the memories have suffocated beneath. Every day is punctured by holes. Black dots spread like swarms of flies. We wear them as new skin. I hid my doll in the bottom drawer before we left, to keep her safe. (They will stop searching when the top is empty… won’t they?) I sit on a peeling stool and draw a neat house with garden, a yellow sun in a clear sky (no birds) and a little girl in a gold dress picking a flower for her mother. I cry for what I had. I cry for now. Should I cry for tomorrow? I might not be here. My clothes are dirty and torn, but glamour has no worth. Now I wish: for Mama to come back and shine on me; for a new hand so that we can hold each other; to be sung to soft-feathered sleep. Helen Laycock
July 24, 2025 at 3:31 PM
helenlaycock.bsky.social
How devastating the #wildfires in Crete.

I have several #PoemsAbout #BurnItDown but I am sharing with
@alanparry83.bsky.social and @brokenspinearts.bsky.social today the poem I wrote about the fire in L.A., the City of Angels:

‘CHARRED WINGS’

#poetry #poetsofbluesky #skypoets #poetrycommunity
July 4, 2025 at 8:06 AM
helenlaycock.bsky.social
A #poem on the theme of #silence...

This is 'WATERQUELL'

#poetry #poetrycommunity #poetrylovers
July 1, 2025 at 2:35 PM
helenlaycock.bsky.social
Two versions of the same poem... one at 79 words and the other at 8.

This is the #truestory of a dreadful car accident I was involved in as a child.

A drunk driver and no seatbelts could have had a much more tragic outcome.

#poetry #poetsofbluesky #DUI
#skypoets #poetrycommunity #poetrylovers
June 24, 2025 at 5:48 PM