Editorial Note by Max Wallis

In her third poem, A&E, Jenny Pagdin leaves the private hush of dread and homesickness for the fluorescent limbo of hospital night. “Ambulatory Majors” becomes a geography - “the vista-less hinterland / we’re all called to from time to time” - while those who love us drift “over the sea of sleep.” Pagdin’s eye is exact and humane: short-shorts, fleecy housecoats, “cake-mix basins” clutched like talismans. Thought itself turns moth-like, batting at a “strip-light moon.” The speaker waits on “royal-blue plastic” as her mother disappears behind the curtain, time marked by “stars… like clock hands” or the doctor’s palpation. The final repetition of “the keening, the keening” lets another patient’s pain score the whole room. Pagdin holds tenderness and dread in the same light, making a communal hymn out of waiting.

About the author:

Jenny Pagdin is the author of The Snow Globe (Nine Arches, 2024) and Caldbeck (Eyewear, 2017), both exploring her experiences of postpartum psychosis. Winner of the 2024 East Anglian Book Award for Poetry, she was highly commended in the Bridport Prize, shortlisted for the Mslexia Pamphlet Competition, and placed second in the Café Writers Prize. Her work appears in Poetry London, Magma, The Emma Press, and elsewhere.

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