The Feast

Tom Pow is not only one of our best living poets, he must be one of the best-travelled. In “The Feast”, which appears in In the Becoming – New and Selected Poems (Polygon, £12.99), he writes not of his journeys, but of food– in this instance, a glorious meal of lobster. Pow has several poems about food and eating, which is why he is the ideal poet to be partnered with chef Neil Forbes for an event at the Scottish Poetry Library on 27 November (see below for details).

Fresh Maine lobster was laid before us – a knuckly scarlet bouquet; the garlic butter put beside in a dainty white cruet.

We had been told how to proceed: first tugging the oblong head from the fan-tail (a cost ritual – the breaking of bread)

before we cracked the brittle armour apart. Now we could pick at the pink spread flesh, dipping each flake in the butter till we reached the grey mess

of brain. At first we glanced at each other, checking our lobster etiquette, but, as we warmed to the task, our appetites set

their own rules. We cracked off legs, ripped ligaments, sucked slow on salty, hairy limbs in our own ways; till – best of all – the claws. It was almost whim

that I looked up then and broke the absorption of your eye as you lovingly kissed a morsel of that sweetest flesh goodbye. You can find a copy of by In the Becoming – New and Selected Poems by Tom Pow at the Scottish Poetry Library, 5 Crichton’s Close, Edinburgh EH8 8DT. For poetry enquiries, e-mail reception@spl.org.uk or visit www. scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk