In his latest poetry collection, award-winning writer Michael Pedersen celebrates love, loss, friendship and cats with characteristic ebullience and vitality. Read three poems from the Forward-shortlisted collection below.

The Cat Prince & Other Poems
By Michael Pedersen
Published by Corsair

The Cat Prince

I am the Cat Prince, I declare,
already on all fours, already balls-naked
in the house of Hastie, where there’s Adam
(Hastie), Daniel & me—the Cat Prince.

We’re boyhood budbursts, twelve years
of silly in us. Adam laughs frantic
gasps, guffaws, then pegs it
to his bedroom anticipating the chase.

Daniel, wavering between cat & laddie,
compañero & fugitive, succumbs
to the gnostic glamour—strips
for a full feline transformation.

Down to our little furs, little bloods,
ready to breenge past the chide
of absent classmates, who might well
hear of this and smite us with shame.

We are cuddle-kings hankering
for Adam’s adulation—all moggy moxie
we embrace the cat life, vow
inurement to the side effects:

carpet burns, wind-lashed pimpling;
the sacrifice of language in each
falsetto yowl. As hunters we’re tasked
by the Creator: our gaze

a crosshair; our pounce a ripple
of bravura. Who else so guilefully stalks
sunbeams? We’d do well here
—it’s those damn cats again,

the neighbours would learn to yawp,
as I raced by with a robin redbreast
between my jaws & Daniel finished shitting
in their rhubarb patch. It’s convenient

not to think of the killer in us,
holding back our purr, assassin-still.
As we coil our new cat bodies to a spring,
Adam clambers feart atop his bed.

What happens next is louder
than we hoped for. Adam’s mum, startled
by the cacophony, arrives then screams,
curtailing the playdate. Later that night

she calls my mum, concerned,
though my mum never mentions this.
I can only assume she was wise to it
—the mythos, the hieroglyphs—fathomed

we’d soon meet the type of trouble
that could really shake boys down:
long days when the teeth tear it out of us
& the claws don’t stop coming.

But not yet, I hear her whisper,
not without this moment’s orchestra
of feeling. As a boy I was whiskerless,
weighed down by the nest of knots

squat in my belly. As a cat,
I was so much more. Of course,
as mother to the Cat Prince,
she knew all this.

Queensferry’s Lost Not Found
—for Scott

It’s something only you could draw,
that’s the infuriating thing: ickle fish
enmeshed in thick beard,
limbs in seaweed stookies—
in your pocket two jostling crabs.
Shoes salted, teeth gooped,
a beatific smile pious
as a new kite.

Skipper, this is how I imagined
you’d be found, having undergone
an aquatic mummification
you’d overseen personally,
fastidiously; a lewd merman
belching by your flank.

The big question was not
whether we wanted to spot you—
like a stricken porpoise or seal
too curious—but whether, if we did,
to throw you back
or take you home for supper;
the colours having shifted.

Yesterday’s battering
whittled to a scorch of hours,
snuffed to a wound. No.
More than that—this purse of love,
pilfered by another universe
neglecting to leave a note;
body-break foil-wrapped.

On a balmy Thursday night in May,
after a second day of searching,
abrupt waterworks beneath
a lamppost in Leith, a cauldron
of light wombed around life’s
whipping, ripe bawling.
I took the call. I’ll admit,
I’m relieved it wasn’t me.

storm above johannesburg

naissance
what starts smaller than a slug in its ninth symphony
becomes too big to be drawn in anything but fat crayon.
the biggest storm in forever bedevils boots then
an entire city. comes from nothing, same way ego comes
from nothing—furtively, dreaming in gold.

jonathan slams the ’84 benz to an
emergency stop. our bodies thrust
forwards, his tots yelp. the old windscreen
wipers bungled, full obfuscation—we’re
bathroom-door blind.

stage one
keening sky rasps. tents collapse into wraith shapes.
the tempest turns the air gun-hungry. bang.
a coke can increases its violence. bang.
the deluge descends flailing—thunderclap, hail
—a rampage of lightsabres & electric wire.

heads jutting out windows, we captain the
vessel back to our hotel just minutes from
this.

stage two
glissando, crescendo, old ink gushing out, dynamite
on a bonfire of voices. kaboom. a fox scavenger
hauled into the squall, its meat devoured—guts &
brush spat onto a billboard. some call that art.

flash fast jonathan & his brood cuddled-up
watching tele in their newly acquired
room. you & I on adjoining balconies
donning leopard print robes. ten floors up
in audience with zeus.

ninth
cars alarmed blast banshee, the whale’s song bulleted
—prayers smoored by night’s vile sauce. infinite
wagner blitzed onto the fifty-four-storey ponte city
skyscraper. the brutalist cylinder bows like a beggar.

we erupt into lavish giggle, can-clinking
hysteria, releasing trapped lightening.
despite the danger, the daggers, we couldn’t
have slept sounder.

outro
muck unfixed of its dirt settles. earth negative
versus sky positive shrunk to the maudlin howl
of an animal starved, rain once needle-nasty
now just wool-scratchy on soft pelts.

delight-bright at the breakfast buffet, we
discuss the storm as if it’s already buried.

aftermath
if only I’d known we’d survive it, I’d have seen us
swoop at its stormy vitellus—soak our skin
to the blue beneath, tumble over pissing everywhere;
not least for the movie rights, for the starlit fix.

if only I’d known you’d not survive the
next, I’d have eased up on the step count,
quit pushing fruit, joined you in bacon.

The Secret Life of Balconies

Little boxes full of stars. They’re up there,
spaceship fleets of them: concrete sages;
mobster floats; hoverboard tapestries
of the twilight. Each a sliver of sovereignty
scrappled back from the ether—a deckchair,
fairy lights & a smoking bucket.
The best ones are scanty, towel-sized
& jam-packed with chintz, blasted by sunlight’s
lavender. The very best are pullulating
with plant life, pollen thronging nirvanas
for our insect saviours.

Little carnivals of the imagination. I love
spotting them, sneaky & incongruous,
catching the eye of their mystic jockeys
—hauling us together: I see you, moon rider,
in that string vest, oily chest, those magic
tan lines, tinnie in hand. Love it when they
thunder back: I see you, day drifter—a magisterial
wave as if signalling for the games to begin.
The can, rinsed of its elixir, raised up,
up, higher than the sun dares set,
inches from a jealous god.

The Cat Prince & Other Poems by Michael Pedersen is published by Corsair, priced £12.99