“Economy Point” by Helen Tookey (from her new collection, “In the Quaker Hotel”, 2022) is reprinted by kind permission of Carcanet Press, Manchester, UK. Helen Tookey was born near Leicester in 1969 and is now based in Liverpool, where she teaches creative writing at Liverpool John Moores University.

Her debut collection “Missel-Child” (Carcanet, 2014) was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney First Collection Prize; her second, “City of Departures” (Carcanet, 2019), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection.