Winner 2025 River Heron Poetry Prize
My work frequently examines gender-based power issues, and “My house is slipstreamed” is no exception. The images of my house, and of me, being ‘in the way’ and being isolated with little agency are both real (the three parts of the poem are based on true events) and yet very obviously metaphoric at the same time. In this poem, I am surrounded by men and violence. I am passive, unable to act, yet remain.
Based in the English Midlands, Alison Tanik is a poet, performer and playwright who came to writing in her mid-50s. Her work addresses sexuality and relationships with men, especially power dynamics. She has an MA in poetry from the Manchester Writing School and is a Nine Arches Press Dynamo Poet 2025-2026. She performs her work nationwide under the stage name “Who the Fuck is Alice.” Alison has also lived extensively in the Middle East and is a fellow of the Abraham Path Initiative. Alison is due to begin her doctoral research on archival silences in coal mining communities in September 2025.
I: @who.thefuckisalice
X: @NomadicAlison
F: Alison Tanik
Photo by Taylor Sidwells/Tedious Visuals
Judge Jed Myers’ Comments:
Some poems are composed in ways that resonate with their content so as to amplify and sustain their music. “My house is slipstreamed” is a prose poem in three parts—three seasons, three different times of day—all in one humble and vulnerable voice. The war that floods around and past the speaker’s house sweeps the lone dweller up in a private storm of witness, and the poem in turn slipstreams us. The absurdity of the tide of mass violence sings from the magic machine of this box of moments, and leaves our cores calling for that peace “when the firing stops,…the only light the flashing of fireflies in the mulberry tree.”