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Harry Giles

Harry Giles is a writer and performer from Orkney, living in Edinburgh. He founded Inky Fingers Spoken Word and co-directs the live art platform ANATOMY. He has published two pamphlets Visa Wedding (Stewed Rhubarb, 2012) and Oam: Poems fae Govanhill Baths (Stewed Rhubarb, 2013). He was the 2009 BBC Scotland slam champion, and was shortlisted for 2014 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award. His participatory theatre has been programmed by such festivals as Forest Fringe, Buzzcut, NTI (Latvia), and  Bunker (Slovenia).

Visit Harry Giles' website.

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Piercings

It took two looks to see him –
snapped head and loose jaw, silent
moviewise. The boy who broke me in,
my head, my skin, up, said “a break-
down would do you good”. The change

snuck him past me, but: same flesh,
same stride. I called; we spoke.
The quick, smiling chat of two
folk who knew inside each other's

mouths, but not heads. I looked hard.
The difference wasn't clear, and then
it was. – The lipring that turned
his pout sullen, hot. The jangle

of earrings I'd buried my face in
as he steel-tracked my heavy
shoulders. The scaffold. The sharp,
shocking stud in his busy tongue.

All gone. In the four years since
he hauled me into a lift, with
“You wanna make out?”, he'd pulled
out every metal sign, become

employable, less obvious. I'd paid
ten quid in Camden for my first, made
more holes each time I got depressed.
Got inked. He asked, “So what do you do now?”


‘Piercings’ © Harry Giles. Reprinted by kind permission of the author and Stewed Rhubarb Press, 2012. 

Watch Harry Giles perform his work.
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