Helen Kay’s collection is a small journey.

It begins with people struggling to survive the icy waters of everyday living. It then progresses through a carefully-crafted metaphorical patchwork of images of nature, healing, touch, food and the domestic space, towards a quiet affirmation of the thrill of new things happening.

The first reviews are available at the end of this section, and you can pre-order your copy here.

Helen Kay

Helen Kay’s poems have appeared in many magazines, such as The Rialto, Stand, Under the Radar, Poetry Society News and Butcher’s Dog. Her second pamphlet, 'This Lexia & Other Languages' (V. Press) arrived in 2020. She was a finalist in the 2022 Brotherton Anthology (Carcanet). In 2023, she won the Ironbridge and Repton Poetry Competitions. In 2024, she won the Leeds Poetry Peace Prize, the Cheshire Prize for Literature and was the overall winner of the Bournemouth Writing Festival’s ‘Lines in the Sand’ competition.

Helen is actively involved in various groups in the Cheshire/Shropshire area, notably Poetry Whitchurch, which runs a wide range of events. She curates a project supporting dyslexic creatives: dyslexiapoetry.co.uk. She is known on social media for her hen puppet influencer and performer, Nigella. She is on X @HelenKay166 and also spends too much time on Facebook.

Reviews for
It Was Never About the Kingfisher

  • This is a vibrant collection of the home – of kitchens, bedrooms, picture hooks, homewreckers and housewives. But there is nothing cosy here, as the poems impart stark feelings of emptiness – the evening is a ‘blank page’, a pine dining table is ‘bare as a coffin’ and death is an ‘empty plate’. Here Kay doubles down, deftly ring-fencing her reader with images of boundary and separation: curtains are shut ‘tight as secrets’, a coastline is marked by ‘gnashing rocks’, and even ‘names are borders’. And yet – with a kind of alchemy – Kay manages to use such images of emptiness and isolation to also sing of hope and joy. It Was Never About the Kingfisher is not a book of one shade, but multihued and prismatic; each poem, like the titular kingfisher, is a small swift moment of iridescence.

    Mark Pajak

  • Universal themes of aging and mortality are given a fresh, absorbing makeover in this exciting collection. Helen Kay has a way of unsettling and fascinating the reader at the same time, often in the same line. She has an eye for domestic pathos and a way of making life’s mundanities fizz with vitality. Even melancholic observations are served up with a wry smile and lip-smacking originality. In one poem, a loud but harmless drunk unnerves his fellow train passengers, who are ‘boxed up / like matches, some unlit, others spent / judgment smouldering in their eyes.’ The poems are underpinned by a breezy philosophy which feels genuine and unforced: ‘The thrill is that new things still happen.’

    Ian Humphreys

  • These poems look at the world from a different angle, transforming the ordinary into something extraordinary and beautiful. The background of our lives – home and garden, and the domestic work that goes on there - is brought into focus and illuminated. Mundane chores such as doing the laundry are elevated through rich language, moments are observed with poignancy and humour. Surprising metaphors and similes offer a fresh perspective - from the ‘bra gymnasts’ on the washing line, to the hens, ‘five/muffins self-raising into each other.’ Navigating a path through love and loss, ecological themes, remedies and cures for illness, these unique poems explore the idea that ‘new things still happen’. A tender and insightful collection, full of optimism and delight, celebrating what it means to be human.

    Sally Baker