Lynda O'Neill was born and brought up in Portsmouth, lives in Winchester with her husband and has two children. She worked as an administrator in the public sector until retirement. A lifelong interest in language led her to a creative writing class at an arts centre in 1998, and her first work appeared the following year. Her published work has appeared in South, Poetry Nottingham International, Iota, and The New Writer and in the anthology, The Ticking Crocodile. She has been a guest reader at The Wessex Poetry Festival and Salisbury Poetry Café, and at events run by New Forest Poets and South Magazine. She is a member of Second Light Network, a network of women poets.

She uses a mix of darkness and humour to emphasize the nuances and absurdities of human behaviour.

Quelle: poetry p f


Brian Sewell at The Tower,
Winchester

Intrigued to read that a film crew said he was
a total arsehole
when they filmed his Grand Tour,
I sat schtum, thankful for ex art students
who asked intelligent questions.
Clearly, my mild enthusiasm for
Frida Kahlo or Paula Rego would
produce a withering one liner.

He dealt briefly with Damian and Tracy
in that notorious drawl, those pistol consonants,
said too little about how the friendship with Blunt
had stopped him working in America.
Mesmerized by the passion on his elderly features
as he talked of Titian’s brushwork,
he showed me what I’d missed.

He answered too many questions
and we filed out, exhausted.
For some reason I looked back.
In his tweed overcoat at
the door to the Green Room,
he watched us quizzically,
white eyebrows twitching
with whatever he made of us.

Lynda O'Neill
published in South magazine, ISSN 0959-1133