‘The Fossil Hunter’ by Angela Carr

Mary Anning (1799–1847)

Hammer in hand, she stalks the lonely shore
in winter, beneath the hanging cliffs at Lyme –
her terrier, Tray, scouting near. She combs each tide,
scavenger of petrified creatures, their lost world
turned loose in a storm-slip of shale and lime.
Rain whips at the crumbled bluff as, wind-splayed,
wrestling the sea’s black suck, she scrambles her way,
in wool skirts, wet and weighty, up the incline
of treacherous scree, to strike upon
a seam of devil’s fingers, ammonite, bezoar stone.

And when her seventeen-foot Fish Lizard
rattles the bones of the universe –
unveiled in London to acclaim – gentlemen
of Science take the stage, bury her name.

From issue #6: spring/summer 2018

About the Author
Angela Carr lives in Dublin and is published in Prelude, Mslexia and Abridged. In 2016, she was placed/shortlisted in the Aesthetica Magazine Creative Writing Award, The London Magazine and Oxford Brookes international poetry competitions and nominated for a Pushcart Prize.