A young poet turns family memory into something living, exploring love, loss, and the stories that outlast us…
There is something quietly astonishing about hearing a voice as young as Eva O’Connor’s speak with such emotional clarity. Only fifteen, living just north of Liverpool, she already writes with the instinct of someone who understands how memory works its way into us — how it blurs, softens, and yet somehow becomes sharper with time. She tells Liverpool Noise that she felt honoured to contribute to this collection, though anyone reading her work will quickly see that the honour flows both ways…
Eva is no stranger to the written word. She has won a poetry competition, seen her work published, and even received an award for a retelling of a classic story. Away from the page she is like most young people her age — spending time with her dog, absorbing TV dramas, and devouring any book that crosses her path. But beneath that sits something deeper: a fierce connection to family stories, particularly those tied to her Pop, who died when she was only three.
Those early memories — half-formed, second-hand, but deeply cherished — mingle with tales of her great-grandads, her fascination with history, and the echoes of World War II that still ripple through British family life. The idea for this poem arrived, as the best ones often do, in that soporific drift before sleep. She had to write it down before it vanished.
What emerged is a tender, quietly luminous piece: a child’s evolving understanding of grief, legacy, and love. The poem traces a memory of her mother describing her own father — a man who, she insisted, wouldn’t have been a poppy in a field of millions. So she “planted” him, imaginatively, lovingly, and in doing so cast memory into something living.
As time stretches on, the poem reveals a gentle truth: that love persists, that stories root themselves, and that even in a field of poppies, two roses wait faithfully for one another…
ROSE
there’s a faint memory, hazing the back of our minds
of her telling us about him,
her father,
about how he wouldn’t have been a poppy
let alone one in with a million, or a billion
(or the biggest number she could think up at the age of six)
so out she went,
as soon as she could,
and planted him.
she said that she’d heard him that day
(although it was probably her young imagination);
he laughed his warm laugh
and she knew that he was proud
and years later,
or so she tells us,
he’s still there, in his field
and she says that he’s waiting for her
(which we accepted at the young age)
but now we know
that the two roses in the poppy field
were waiting for one another
EVA O’CONNOR
