Ruth Fainlight was born in New York and has lived mostly in England since she was 15.

A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature she has produced many books, not only of poetry but of translations and short stories, as well as drama and opera libretti. She was married for more than 50 years to the late Alan Sillitoe.

Below is a sample, with a transatlantic setting, from her New and Collected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, £20).

THE WEDDING CHAPEL

My Nashville apartment

was near the campus and

opposite the Wedding Chapel.

If only I’d made friends

with someone local

I might have been invited

to a ceremony –

but I knew no one.

~

Weekend afternoons

I would sit by the window,

watching them enter,

one couple after another.

I could only imagine

exactly what happened

in the chapel, from the look

on their faces, afterwards.

~

Sometimes music

from inside would reach me –

interesting, what they chose

(maybe old songs from

the Bluebird Café) – notes

which blew across the road

like the gold and silver stars

and moons of the confetti.

~

It made me feel older, lonely –

but lucky – because I knew

that even though I stayed

the whole semester in Nashville,

when I got back home,

my husband would look at me

as wonderingly as if

we still were bride and groom.