Original Fiction and Poetry

(in)Complete Works
Original Fiction & Poetry
Novel Gallery
Chesleyan Chestnuts

You can read more original fiction from Emily Chesley in the Meanderings of the Emily Chesley Reading Circle<

Other poetry by Emily

Gaelic Haiku

Titan Yore Finkster Press, 1903

Though Emily Chesley was best known for her novels, she also dabbled in poetry. Never one to travel the paths of creative convention, Chesley shunned the more common poetic forms of limerick, sonnet and looser rhyming styles of her peers in favour of an eclectic mix that combined Celtic imagery with the sparse, non-rhyming rhythm of Japanese haiku.

Gaelic Haiku, an illustrated collection of 40 verses, stands as Chesley's seminal work of poetry. Her unorthodox style, in typical Chesley fashion, reveals a tortured soul whose personal demons are exposed in stark detail.

Fire in the byre, for instance, draws from Chesley's first experience with death, one that left her ambivalent about the loss of her childhood friend, Bessie the cow:

Fire in byre! Moo!
Squealing bovinian sizzle
Dung-heap stench no more

Bog-trotter touches on the timeless theme of a young girl's struggles with the hormonal changes that come about during the delicate years:

Oh, bog-trotter boy
Caress my breeches with peat
Stoke my spongy turf

A final example, Pint swiller, is a retrospective commentary on the taste Chesley acquired for stout liquor at a shamefully young age:

Pint swiller beware
For the banshee walks wi' ye;
Fiddlers fart, who cares?

--"Scholarship" by Foothills