Jane Commane's Blog

 On writing 'Light Year'
Light Year by Jennifer Wong is a reflective book of poems charting love, loss and a healing that's buoyed by "trust in change and radical hope."
In the poet's "reflective journey" she explores the meaning of home and kinship. She reconnects with art through song, film, visiting galleries and libraries. She reconnects too with the creativity of writing itself and with friends and fellow-artists, challenging herself to claim "an unsettling but honest territory of self-acceptance and acceptance of others."




Light Year 
I’d pretend we’re looking at the stars three billion years away in Ursa Minor: a galaxy nonetheless: 
starfield on a window from the spacecraft docked to the furthest space station in history. 
Even if a star dies, its light echoes around the cosmos. The space between the stars are not empty but filled 
                                     with filaments of dust and gas. 
As the supernova shuttles through space                           at the speed of light, its echo               expands.
                                      Think of the star factories. 
           do you know the two blue smudges are magellanic clouds?            Can you remember the first image of our black hole                                                              where no light can escape? 
Or imagine a black hole billions of times the mass of the sun? 
For astronauts on the space station, the moon appears to rise and set 16 times each day. 
It takes a 25-second-long exposure with an iso of 3200. 
We need to wait for millions of yearsto build a galaxy cluster like Abell 2025: stripped of their gas, they fall through hot, high pressure clouds. 
Or for someone like me to make an irrevocable decision based on an utter lack of rationale or evidence -
seen from above, the earth’s atmosphere simply glows red and green. 

***

Ithas been a strange journey putting together Light Year. To alarge extent, I started off not knowing what to write about. With LettersHome, I felt more in control of the poems and with where they go, as Ireached for a more coherent sense of home, but even then, I feel that LettersHome cannot quite capture all of me and my longings.

Light Year was born out of that feeling oflack, of trying to understand or grapple with myself or selves. I was in arather dark place of my life, feeling quite unable to reconnect with the moreoptimistic 'me'. I missed the clarity and hopefulness in my older self ingirlhood. At the same time, I wanted to move on to something, somewhere moregenuine, away from compromise. Moreover, I was looking for some form of healingand recovery. And despite everything, I have trust in humanity, in humannature, in change and radical hope. 

Inthis writing process, I came across so many brilliant books that explore ourcomplex wants in life, our sense of love and kinship, whether poems or fiction.In this introspective journey, I realised how I don't really have a veryanchoring place I can call ‘home’, whether as a mother, as a migrant or as alover, and how losing a sense of self-worth has been a difficult feeling tocome to terms with. I had very broken sleep patterns throughout the two yearsof writing, but it is only during these somnambulist hours that I wrote some ofthe core poems (say ‘Alexa’ and ‘Afterward’) in the book where various otherpoems stem from.

Inthe creative process, I discovered that I can make things happen by simplytrying to turn over a stone each time, to give shape to what’s inside, even ifunintelligible. I spent time delving into Canto, Mando-pop songs, soundtracks,and went to galleries and watched films to bring back that sense of joy andintimacy with art or a vision of what art does. Whenever I could, I spent timeon my own. I found myself scribbling again, not so much for competitions ormagazines but for myself, and saw these poems as letters, letters that were notaddressed to anyone in particular, but just a promise that they would be read,perhaps, some day.

Iam so grateful to many kind and like-minded folks, writers in their respectivestages of writing or genres, who recommended books of strength and healing tome, including Jinhao Xie who sent me a copy of the poetry anthology Everythingis Going to be All Right: Poems for When You Really Need Them, while EthanYu from Sacramento gifted me a copy of Love’s Work: A Reckoning of One’sLife by Gillian Rose. Sometimes the writing arrived after some moments offriendship or revival; or I’d return to drafts, to take out or add back somelines after a bubble tea break or watching films with friends like SentimentalValue and Hamnet. I find these gestures of kindness and solidaritywith other friends and fellow writers all so generous and nourishing in helpingme retrieve what I have forgotten, and what I wanted to say and share, and thereading of these poems was made whole through friendship.

Thosemonths when I had the poems brewing in me, I looked up texts and quotes andimages from a lot of libraries, finding inspiration from rediscovering otherlives or art that I could relate to. I am particularly overjoyed to browse somematerials from the Poets House, the New York Public Library, the Bodleian andthe London Library. The peace in those libraries reminds me of something I amfamiliar with, an anchoring ground.  Inthis period, reading and editing the work for Rebecca Swift Foundation has alsobeen a process of healing, of community and revival of spirit, and it made mefeel more able to see where my life is going towards, and why poetry is soimportant to me and others.

Ifelt that this writing experience has helped me fall in love with myself again,to reflect on my position of otherness as a migrant and a mother, and also towrite myself into a resilient self, to be receptive to truth and relationshipswith others while I remain a dreamer. From a college quad, a cascade ofchanging streetlights to the sun-filled interior of an art museum, these poemschallenge me to claim an unsettling but honest territory of self-acceptance andthe acceptance of others.

Jennifer Wong is a Hong Kong-born poet who livesin the UK. She studied English at Oxford and has an MA and PhD in creativewriting from University of East Anglia and Oxford Brookes. She has threecollections including Letters Home (Nine Arches Press). She isthe co-editor of State of Play: Poets of East and Southeast AsianHeritage in Conversation (Outspoken Press, 2023) and WhereElse: An International Hong Kong Poetry Anthology (Verve, 2023). Sheis also the author of Identity, Home and Writing Elsewhere (Bloomsbury,2023). She is currently editing Woman, Mapped, aRebecca Swift Foundation women's poetry anthology forthcoming from Fly on theWall Press in mid-2026.

Light Year is available to purchase here.

 

Olivia Tuck’s work has been published by the PoetrySociety and Broken Sleep, and in Propel, Under the Radar, PoetryWales (forthcoming) and Magma (forthcoming). She wonthe 2025 Winchester Poetry Prize, was placed second in the 2023 Jane MartinPoetry Prize awarded by Girton College, Cambridge, and was longlisted for theRebecca Swift Foundation Women Poets’ Prize. She is an associate editorat Lighthouse.

The Volta
The first time leaving your machine-cooled room
for anything other than food or bureaucracy,
the past week’s nights and days reduced to voids

between surges of light and dark, you meet your body
at the beach, to swim: hold your breath,
briefly become driftwood, cloud-pale, splayed

as if storm-struck, cramps eased, spill of your blood hushed
in the shadows of the jetty, the breakwater – you emerge
before sunset, unshivering, cursing as you run

over land’s white heat; sit on your stained towel,
feral, hair and lashes and mouth salt-crusted,
and the gulf is love, sluicing from your forehead,

pooling in your lap, in silken motion,
and the mermaid’s purse of your life is broken open.


Discover all Primer Eight shortlisted poets here

 

Becky Brookfield is a North West based poetwhose work mixes poetry, theatre, and live art to explore nature, femininity,transformation, and the grittier, darker edges of life. Her writing is sharp,witty, and unflinching, finding connection and absurdity in the messy, everydaysurreal. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Manchester MetropolitanUniversity, and her work appears in Joy//Us: An Anthology of Resistanceand Joy (Arachne Press, 2023).

Sothe chef wants to be friends...

 

Listen / that body you're trying to eat
is empty / you can try to snap my legs
dig out the last of my meat / but I crawled
out of that corpse / a soft pink spider crab /
huddled under my sisters / Summer coast
Pembrokeshire / exoskeleton washed up /
small wreck in your hands / slipped limbs
out from the old coat years ago / I am Kaiju /
Ganime’s cousin glutted on your radiation /
hulking claws bulked on jellyfish stings /
bitter seaweed suppers / Too big for your pots/
I'd wear them like jewellery/ if I smashed
through your kitchen / smeared you in butter
/ pink mess in primrose yellow / broken ceiling
tile seasoning / but you're not worth it /
I am an island in the Atlantic / so far out
barely seeing your knives / whittle away
at my remains / you can't have my brain /

Discover all Primer Eight shortlisted poets here

 

Mymona Bibi is a Bengali-British writer, creativefacilitator, and ESOL teacher based in Newcastle. She is interested inmultilingualism, urban landscapes, inequality, and home. Her writing has beenfeatured in the Ilkley Literature Festival, Magma Poetry, Butcher'sDog, Corridor8 and Hajar Press. She has produced andperformed at events such as the Newcastle Fringe Festival and NOVUM Festival.She is the founder of World Writes - a multilingual community writing group.

Dream
Dream: n.

1. something that is mine.
2. something shameful.
3. my body.
4. my knowledge.

e.g. this time I lean over the metal ledge and squint at freedom in the blurry faces I am so sure I recognise. I lean and lean and tell myself that I can fl y and I tell you that I can fl y and so you push me. I fall onto the shopfl oor as if it were a bed and a relief. The sheets are cooler than the sun of desire on my face against yours. my heart is softer as if the beating is moving away under the covers. far away. until I turn and fi nd your body intertwined with everyone else’s, I’m sure now it is hatred or anger. It is anger, that rock stuck in my throat. I can hear it carving vessels from tongue to chest to the heart that won’t stop beating. this rock scratches your features into the galaxy. far away. this rock smashes the world into silence

Discover all Primer Eight shortlisted poets here

 

Rona Luo is a queer, neurodivergent poet interestedin the spaces between borders and boundaries. Her visual poetry has beenexhibited at Royal Festival Hall, and her writing has appeared in Magma,Propel, fourteen poems, The Massachusetts Review, Honey Literary, and more. Shereceived the Creative Futures Gold Prize in Poetry in 2024. She has beensupported by Tin House, Kundiman, Southbank Centre New Poets' Collective, andPoetry School London.

Forty Two Weeks
Say a ghost is a pet.
It feeds on raw mung beans
straight from the package.
Say a small boat sends
a signal through waves,
through kelp, through
swinging human arms
the fish cannot see.
The boat bumps against
hardened shattered lava
shaped like a nose
without room to mother.
Say a mother strings horror
movie decorations over
the lawn but she must
unstitch a book from its
spine or the stories come
true. Octavia writes them.
Say rain pounds on a tin
roof and soft cheese spills
from its rind. Say a third
trimester checklist ticks
itself and spits out herbs.
Fill a clay pot with vinegar
to dissolve every bone.

Discover all Primer Eight shortlisted poets here

 

Natasha Kinsella is an Irish-born poet andwriter based in Scotland. Her work explores silence, inheritance, and therituals of repair. Her poems have appeared in Abridged, ROOM:A Sketchbook for Analytic Action, Beyond Words Magazine,and New Writers. She was highly commended in the Patrick KavanaghPoetry Award and awarded second place in the New Writers competition.She also works within the visual arts as an advocate and development manager,supporting artists and makers across Scotland.

The Name I Was Never Given
In a photograph he stands
stallion-strong,
driftwood light across his skin,
salt wind hollowing the years
before I was carried here.
Still, salt moves through my veins,
ache arriving already sunk.
I wear their faces-his, hers-
stitched beneath my own,
a tangle of lines and broken eyes.
Bone pulls him forward,
remembering what no one speaks.
Charts reduce him to code,
lines drawn backward
to a country I may never stand on
a portion of blood I cannot measure
but feel.
The marrow holds what names will not.
At night, his country rises-
a black coast veiled in fog,
bone carvings smoothed by touch,
the ocean speaking in vowels
I cannot hold,
greenstone cold in the palm.
Feathers fall from birds
without names.
The wind tastes of old rain.
My grandmother sits among quiet books,
education a polished shell
turning in her hand.
She carries him unknowingly,
names that left him behind
running silent beneath art and years.
The prayers heavy in my mouth,
hands remembering work.
Blood knots tighter,
cloth draws close.
The map forgets.
Bone does not.
Blood carries him forward-
driftwood-quiet,
greenstone-sharp
against the palm.


Discover all Primer Eight shortlisted poets here

 

Oliver Carmichael was born and raised in CountyDurham. In 2024 he won the Winchester Poetry Prize and the Aurora Prize forWriting. He was longlisted for the 2025 Disabled Poets Prize and is therecipient of the Michael Donaghy Award which supports a poet to attend the firstArvon Advanced Writing Programme. He is a graduate of LancasterUniversity. 

Song
       after Marcelo Hernandez Castillo

Because the bird sang
before there was a word for song,
            years from now
            someone will name
            what we did in the stomach
            of the woods
                    beside the abandoned
                    bus — it’s dark                    eye sockets; it’s acne
                    of rust; unshaven moss.
                                How like Icarus the light
                                falls unnoticed,                                and the trees whisper
                                in fungus, and I taste batteries                                as you trace lines of flight
                                across the continents of my skull:                                temporal, occipital, parietal.

                               How I fear you will peel me                               like an egg as I push
                               and twist with my fist.
            How the world went silent
            as a closed mouth.
Then opened again —
bird song rushing in.


Discover all Primer Eight shortlisted poets here

 

Carl Alexandersson is a queer poet based betweenGlasgow and London, hailing from Småland, Sweden. He was Highly Commended forthe Edwin Morgan Poetry Award 2022, a runner-up for the Grierson Verse Prize2022, and selected for the BBC Words First programme in 2021. His work hasappeared in Atrium, streetcake magazine, Ink Sweat &Tears, and more. His debut poetry pamphlet 'Förgätmigej // Forget-me-not'was published by Stewed Rhubarb Press in 2023.

Sjöatorpssjön              a duplex
It means something to take it with you;
going for a swim in Sjöatorpssjön.
             Going for a swim in Sjöatorpssjön
             with its dark, dy-filled water.
You carry its dark, dy-filled water
in any crevice, any strand of hair.
             But any crevice, any strand of hair
             will only hold onto it for so long.
This lake has held onto me for so long
from before I knew the value of water.
            Sjöatorpssjön knows that the value of water
            is and isn’t the volume you carry.
I am and am not the volume I carry.
Still. It means something to take it with you.


Discover all Primer Eight shortlisted poets here

 

Alexis Deese-Smith is an emerging writer interestedin navigating neurodivergence by building and bending spaces in which herautistic self might feel at home. Originally from sunny South Carolina, she nowlives in Canterbury with her partner and two doodles. In 2025, she was listedas an Honorable Mention by Plentitutude's Prizes in Nonfiction, shortlisted forThe Poetry Society Free Verse competition, and named a finalist in Frontier’sMisfits Poetry Prize. Her work appears in London Grip, ANMLY,and is forthcoming in Swim Press.

on the phone with my also-autistic sister while she gets groceries
i’m stepping through the automatic doors now,
do you need to turn your volume down?
                                                               oh, look,
grapes are on sale! no, it’s my first time out alone
without the baby – this is a good distraction –
not like you’re a distraction! that’s not what i meant.
it’s just that this isn’t a bad time or anything.
                                                               hold on,about to check this carton of eggs - styrofoam sounds
in 3, 2, 1 - thank you for sending your poem. i read it
and there were lines that made breathing easier.
what’s the best way to give you feedback?
                                                               we can
video call so you can see my facial expressions
or i could write down my thoughts
and you can eat them in little bites.
                                                                 heads up -
wailing toddler on the next aisle – do you remember
that birthday sleepover from hell? when mom sat us down,
family bible on our strawberry-bloomed knees?
the one who loves god must also
                                                              love her sister.
we were fighting parallel battles. fought against love like a
battering ram. we had the same freckles, curl patterns,
glasses prescriptions. didn’t know we were both crying
behind bedroom doors. couldn’t grasp the blurry love
stretched thin between us, but i want to hold your suffering
now. i want to give you the word
                                                            sorry.
my hand is reaching for yours.
we can meet in the middle.

Discover all Primer Eight shortlisted poets here

 

Rachel Jeffcoat is a Yorkshire-born, Hampshire-basedpoet and educator whose work has been widely published, including in PoetryIreland Review, Under the Radar, Banshee, Tearsin the Fence and First Aid (Pan Macmillan 2025). Shewas one of the winners of the 2024 Candlestick Press competition, Poemsof Light, has been nominated for Pushcart and Forward Prizes, and was mostrecently Commended in the 2025 Winchester Poetry Prize.

Salt

Private behind the pantry door,
I lick a finger and stick it
in the jar. I’ve done this
once a day since I knew my body
would leave me at the gate, my dear companion
on a permanent no-fly list. I’m not a fool:
this family tree is rotted through
with heart disease, grandparents bypassed
by their sixties, salt bowls open
on the dinner table, their kids
inheriting congestive chests made thick
with dripping toast. I want the sting of it
on my tongue, the way it colours
the blood. Sets hammers clanging
behind my ribs, alive, alive. A leaflet
at the doctor says a craving
for salt can be a lack of iron, can lead
to high blood pressure, an enlarged
heart muscle. I bite my cheek, flood
my mouth with metal. Stare down the barrel
of my hot, big heart.



Discover all Primer Eight shortlisted poets here