Skip to content

Scottish Poetry Library

Register/Sign in
Shopping Bag Shopping Bag
Bringing people and poems together
  • Home
  • Poetry
    • Poets
    • Poems
    • Makar – National Poet
      • Our Waking Breath: A Poem-letter from Scotland to Ukraine
      • A Woman’s A Woman
      • The story of the Makar – National Poet of Scotland
    • Best Scottish Poems
    • Spiorad an Àite
      Spirit of Place
    • The Trysting Thorns
    • Poetry Ambassadors
      Tosgairean na Bàrdachd
      • Poetry Commissions: Walter Scott 250
        Coimiseanan Bàrdachd: Walter Scott 250
      • Poetry Ambassadors 2021
    • Posters
    • Podcasts
  • Library
    • Become a borrower
    • Catalogue
    • Collections
    • Ask a librarian
    • Copyright enquiries
  • Learning
    • SQA set texts
    • Learning resources
    • Designing sensory poetry activities
    • Children’s poems in Scots
    • National Poetry Day archive
    • New to poetry?
    • Advice for poets
  • Events
    • What’s On
    • Meeting rooms and venue hire
    • Exhibitions
  • Shop
    • Poetry Highlights
    • Entropie Books
    • Stichill Marigold Press
    • Poems for Doctors, Nurses & Teachers
    • Scottish Poetry
    • Poetry Pamphlet Cards
    • Help
  • About us
    • Our story
    • Our people
    • Company Papers & Policies
    • Our projects
    • Our building
    • FAQs
    • Find us
  • Support us
    • Become a Friend
    • Donate
  • Blog
Shopping BagShopping Bag
Ask a librarian
  • Home
  • >
  • Poetry
  • >
  • Cheryl Follon
  • >
  • Paper Flowers
Donate Donate icon Ask a Librarian Ask a Librarian icon

Paper Flowers

Cheryl Follon

Just when the hash smokers are going out to shoplift Scotch eggs, and the neighbour is drinking milkshake, paper flowers is making paper flowers – endless strings of the things for an endless cycle of births, deaths and marriages.


Cheryl Follon

from Santiago (Hexham: Bloodaxe, 2017).
Reproduced with the permission of the author.

Tags:

Best Scottish Poems 2017 flowers

About this poem

This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2017. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editor in 2017 was Roddy Woomble.

Author’s note:

The day before I was asked to write about my poem ‘Paper Flowers’ I was on a flight travelling between New York and London. During the flight I watched the film ‘I, Tonya’ about beleagured figure skater Tonya Harding. The actress Allison Janney playing bitch-mother LaVona wants to see the face of her daughter at the end of a critical skating routine. The camera is poised on Janney’s face – the hundred emotions that play across it even though it barely moves. A few weeks before, I’d learned how the best actors can reproduce what it is to be natural. ‘Paper Flowers’, in its own way, is an actor being natural. It’s based on a true story – the shoplifting episode; not me, someone else – and the cycles and births and deaths are trying to be natural as possible. As natural as lifting food because you’ve got no money and you’re hungry, or you are sick of being told what to do, or living a certain way. It’s one poem in a book of many poems trying to be natural as possible, and startling at the same time.

Share this
Facebook
Twitter
Email

Learn more

Best Scottish Poems 2017

edited by Roddy Woomble
Find out more

Cheryl Follonb.1978

Cheryl Follon lives and works in Glasgow, and has three collections published by Bloodaxe.
More about Cheryl Follon

Online Shop

Browse our range of poetry books, cards and gifts in our online shop.
Shop now
  • Newsletter signup
  • Accessibility
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
Scottish Poetry Library
5 Crichton's Close, Canongate
Edinburgh EH8 8DT
Tel: +44 (0)131 557 2876
© Scottish Poetry Library 2022.
The Scottish Poetry Library is a registered charity (No. SCO23311).
City of Edinburgh logo Green Arts Initiative logo Creative Scotland logo
Scottish Poetry Library