Sally Long has a PhD in Creative Writing from Exeter University. She has had poems published in magazines including Agenda, Envoi, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Poetry Salzburg Review, Shot Glass Journal and Snakeskin amongst others. Sally edits Allegro Poetry Magazine.

Sally Long

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Elegy for an Ancestral Land

After an absence of generations
my tongue refuses to coil
around your words –
husmanskost, surströmming,
kräftskiva, varsågoda.

For now all I'm left
with is a cluster of retreating
images; a row of low stone
cottages pummelled by sea
and wind; yachts in the harbour
their masts ringing in the breeze,
and a ribbon of silver sand
that reaches as far as my memory.