the poet
Though her first language is Czech, Radka Thea Otípková fell in love with English as a young adult. Her poetry has been featured in B O D Y, The North, Moria and Tears in the Fence. In 2017, her pamphlet The Edge of Anything was shortlisted in the Poetry Business International Book and Pamphlet Competition. Her poem Coup de grâce was shortlisted in the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition that same year. Thea won the Waltham Forest Poetry Competition in 2019, and has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem.
the poems
Tut’s Tomb Talks
I am waiting for you. Part of my wall
will need to go to get you in. It will
never heal, this is how they'll find me,
small, perfunctory, unfit for a king, but
I'll hold it all: chariots, thrones, trumpets,
perfumes, precious oils, lapis and gold,
and apricots, oh, apricots, I'll often
imagine them perishing in the dark long after
they have gone, I'll recall the odour of lamb

