Laura Theis

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this sprouting acorn is a little ragamuffin
who’s never been to nursery

she’s never met her mother
she raised herself in bitter rain-soaked earth

but one day she’ll grow up to be
an illustrious oak of renown

she will show them all
she will outgrow them all

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Laura Theis‘ work is widely anthologised and appears in Poetry, Mslexia, Rattle, Aesthetica, etc. Her Elgin-Award-nominated debut ‘how to extricate yourself’, an Oxford Poetry Library Book-of-the-Month, won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize. A current Women Poets’ Prize finalist, she received the AM Heath Prize, Oxford Brookes Poetry Prize, Mogford Prize, Hammond House International Literary Award, and a 2022 Forward Prize nomination.