Krystelle Bamford

Biography

Krystelle Bamford has bounced around a bit. She was born in France, grew up in Ipswich, Massachusetts and went to university in New York where she studied literature and creative writing. She taught English in the Czech Republic after uni and then did her MSc in Edinburgh in 2006. Preferring neeps and tatties to goulash, she has stayed on to work at Canongate Books.  

Writing sample

PANELÁK - České Budějovice

In early spring, the tower blocks

smelled of whitewash, fresh

dirt, the intestinal dew

of water pipes.  The flats

were paper boxes and sound

the currency of nearness:

the steamy shriek of boiling water

for one marital spat. 

For me, the words bread, key, please, ashtray,

were bartered for, hoarded

like marbles in a pocket; silence

was better economy. 

I sometimes watched teenagers

in the courtyard-a bristling flock

among melting snow-banks.  Like geese,

graceful and menacing, all reedy legs

and sleight of hand (a cigarette

for a kiss or chips, a punch, or worse);

their pimples the tiny blossoming scars

of later life, hands fanned out on swelling hips,

shining through their winter clothes. 

In this year I became familiar

with listening in the intermittent stillness

(my fork against my cup / my feet against

my floor), the tiny commerce of solitude

beating steady against the thaw.

 

 

 

 

Comment

"It's just an incredible thing, both in the sense that it's an unbelievable opportunity and that I still haven't quite wrapped my mind around it - I'm so grateful for the time it will allow me to develop my work and feel generally chuffed for the validation."