Sarah O’Connor’s pamphlet ‘A Cloudburst of Women’ was highly commended in the Best Unpublished Pamphlet category of the 2025 Disabled Poets Prize. 

Sequi / To Follow is one of the poems that features in the pamphlet.

The Disabled Poets Prize looks to find the best work created by UK-based deaf and disabled poets.

Sequi / To Follow

I 

You spat me, mother from 200ft. 

Not fully grown yourself but shedding 

scaled-down seed into feathered ash. 

Clouds dashed above your brow, my  

canal-crushed wings reduced our distance,  

and the nourishing damp lifted me  

on salted droplets, to link limbs  

with my growing brothers. 

II 

The cathedral grove was noisier then, wild  

turkey and black bear marching past – 

silver fox sentinel on his oval outcrop. 

I disregarded fallen uncles bleeding tannins  

onto thirsty adder’s tongue. Focused instead  

on the woodpecker’s brisk baritone and  

the blustering bawl of the thaw, as we  

rushed to redefine vertical. 

III 

From below I didn’t notice your lean  

until the hollowed-out hunch pronounced  

one flash-flame too many, and your swollen  

feet scared the earth – roots withering  

with the wind-throw as your toes touched the air.  

A drunken stagger crashing, smashing woodwork,  

you tumbled through the window. Our linked arms  

insufficient to break your fall.  

IV 

It’s dark but I can smell your termite-tortured shell  

loaming, dwindling into oblivion decade by decade.  

My brothers and I still stand in our circle. Rooted  

round your absence. Magnetic north even in death.  

Despite the breathing space, none have surpassed  

your toppling height and we resolutely face  

inwards, staring at a void and each other. Mother,  

did you always know we’d go no further than here? 

About Sarah O’Connor

Sarah O’Connor lives in London where she works backstage in opera. Originally from the West of Ireland, her work can be found in Abridged, Anthropocene, Atrium, The Broken Spine, Green Ink Poetry, Honest Ulsterman, Ink Sweat & Tears, and Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal. Her work has been anthologised in Demos Rising from Fly on the Wall Press and Under your Pillow from Victorina Press. She was shortlisted for the 2021 Bangor Poetry Prize.