Commended: Freya Beer, house tudor

Freya Beer

Commended - Tower Poetry Prize 2025, 'Roots'

house tudor

henry viii

his father    will never make any attempt    to hide his disappointment    but as a river can learn

to fill new banks    a second son can learn to gorge like the first    and he Does    Learn    He

is Bloody-handed    He is Brutal    He plants saplings as if there is no tomorrow and watches

as the Strongest sprouts roots

edward vi

i

the day he is breeched    they tell him it is an honour    to have your head crushed    against

the pages of history    they tell him to feed the tree    and watch crowns and chalices    tumble

from its boughs    only    when he visits    it turns its branches away    Father-like

ii

there is a dog under the tree    it shivers through the day    the boys call it arthur    they have

caped it in gold    he can see it from his bedroom    it lies but will not sleep    it shivers through

the gold

iii

the final year    he cannot look at the tree anymore    at his pen-knife carvings    the

sap-stained scribblings   of knights and dragons    of jesters and kings    makes him wonder

if it ought not to have given him    a little longer    given him a little more space    to become

mary i

i

rage.    bright rage     infernal rage    womanly rage    guttering like candle flame    spilling like

wine    all of this pain    for the pink of her lips    the curve of her chest    the swell of her hips?

ii

eventually    she visits the tree    presses its holy splinters    into her holy palms    and soon

the branches bow and scrape    and brush against her ear    and call her beautiful    call her

divine    call her    queen

iii

not a lovely daughter    not a loving mother    not a beloved wife    so perhaps   she is not a

sister, either    not to this girl who smells like    bark and belief and book ash    she confesses

this to the tree, that final year    and just like her    it begins to burn alive

elizabeth i

i

a serving boy once asks her    how she is so patient    how she suffers such    humiliation

and she can smell admiration on his breath    so she tells him    the weight of waiting    feels

so much lighter    than the    hot touch of fathers    the    cold steel of blade

ii

when she is crowned    the tree begins to fawn    gifts her broaches    adorns her with silks    it

calls her virginia, gloriana    as if her value is in her    blue blood    or her   pearlescent thighs

and not the calluses on her palms; the ridges against her skin

iii

it is not until that final year    that the tree wants    her nephew    wants his   unshaking hands

his    open palms    it tells her this    and she laughs and she presses her thumb into its bark

and she watches her skin split open like the petals of a rose in bloom    she tells the tree

You have had my blood now        You shall not have his