White Things about Her on Every Side – a poem by Laura Varnam

White Things about Her on Every Side


'as thykke in a maner as motys in the sunne'
The Book of Margery Kempe, Chapter 35



The thing is, those dust-motes
aren't God, they're angels.
Thick and sticky and beaten
back by her roaring, turning
blue in dalliaunce 
as they shilly-shally
in seraphed ranks to sanctify
our girl, Margery,
God's bread box,
where he rests
his bare and battered bones:
let her field those prayers
a while
unbidden

Dr Laura Varnam is the Lecturer in Old and Middle English Literature at University College, Oxford. Her poetry is inspired by the medieval texts that she teaches and her poems have been published in journals including Bad Lilies, Banshee Lit, Berlin Lit, and Wet Grain; the academic journal postmedieval with a creative-critical essay; and the anthologies Gods & Monsters: Mythological Poems (ed. Ana Sampson) and All Shall Be Well: A Poetry Anthology for Julian of Norwich (ed. Sarah Law). She is currently writing a book on modern adaptations of Margery Kempe’s life and Book.