Jay Bernard (@brrnrrd) is a writer and graphic designer. She was a winner of the Poetry Society’s Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award in 2005, and of the Respect Slam in 2004. In 2014, she won the Ink Sweat & Tears/Café Writers Poetry Pamphlet Commission. Her first pamphlet, ‘Your Sign is Cuckoo, Girl’ (tall-lighthouse) was published in 2008 and was a Poetry Book Society summer choice. Her second pamphlet, ‘English Breakfast’, is available from Math Paper Press.

‘The Language of Fish’ appears in ‘English Breakfast’, and is republished here with permission from the poet.