Bio
Dr. Emily Bilman is London Poetry Society’s Stanza representative in Geneva where she lives and teaches poetry. Her dissertation, The Psychodynamics of Poetry, was published by Lambert Academic in 2010 and Modern Ekphrasis in 2013 by Peter Lang. Two of her poetry books, Resilience, and A Woman By A Well were published by Troubador, UK in 2015. Her poems, essays, and translations of Neruda and Valéry appeared in The Battersea Review, Hunger Mountain, The High Window, The Journal of Poetics Research, Tuck Magazine, Offshoots, Literary Heist, Expanded Field, and London Magazine. “The Tear-Catcher” won the first prize for depth poetry in The New York Literary Magazine. She edits and writes poems and essays for an digital ekphrastic publication www.paintedpoetry.org. Her latest poetry book, The Threshold of Broken Waters, was published by Troubador in September 2018. Her short fiction piece “The Gun” has appeared in Talking Soup. She blogs on her website: http://www.emiliebilman.wix.com/emily-bilman
Trigger Warning
In the resilient haze of my infanthood
A half-opened drawer of linens
Exudes my mother’s fragrance
Of jasmine, almond, and cloves.
Steeped in the dreamscape
Of plankton-strewn seas,
Cradled by a new-born glossolalia
I withstand emptiness.
Like a passage of truth
In a book igniting my vigilance,
Sustenance atones my hunger,
Initiating primal speech.