ONE YEAR OF ‘IT TAKES TIME TO BE CASTLES’
CELEBRATING THE ANNIVERSARY OF SKY DAIR’S DEBUT COLLECTION WITH THREE POEMS
A raw and evocative exploration of memory, survival, and self-reclamation—set against North London estates, Irish heritage, and transient spaces—Sky Dair's debut navigates love and loss, violence and tenderness, exile and belonging with a voice that moves seamlessly between stark reality and lyrical introspection. Read three of the poems from the collection below:
Sinéad
I want to stomp on that photo
a rip through the middle was not
enough
collect the crosses and
tributes to powerful men
adorning painful hallways
plunge them into paintwork
lumps and chunks I can scratch my nails into
and gouge this structure
rip doors off frames
throw them out of the windows
snap handles and safety locks off
an oxymoron
pin family accomplices and the pope
to the walls and roar
so close spit hangs off their eyelashes
slash carpets
down the middle
stand in shreds
jump on the furniture
chair legs buckle and snap, I have snapped
I will weave splinters into every pore of your skin
pitiful cuts hiding in plain sight
stinging like fuck
shatter telly glass with angry feet
because it
sedates so many of us
tear off shower curtains
swing them shouting and
throw up the insults that were spat at me
vomit trails, bile revenge
turn all the taps on
walk out
and let
this fucking ship
sink without
me
The luck of the
I sat on the balcony gazing at the blocks
with Canary Wharf on our horizon
echoing its opulence with realms of plastic neon pearls
and bangles
clanking on my wrists, protection amulets
kids on bright orange space hoppers
bounced by
reverberating
against sunny concrete
clutching on with sticky Wotsit hands
stretched out smiles
hundreds of mothers
in networks of weariness
steering ships
colliding when tensions
rose in the square
the pub opposite called Zenith
but none of us stood a chance at reaching our peak so
they all gathered at doors
fingers crossed
for a knight in shining armour
mane flowing in the North London wind
galloping up to number 524
neighbours at their patches of the concourse
awaiting fortunes too
skies turn with late summer blubbers
but maybe
pots of gold
wait by where
the boys play on their mopeds
Funny things happened in the flat too
the mould boy took a trip to the estate
our walls were growing
so eventually they sent him
and you’d forgotten whilst out up Angel
so I answered the door in utter shock as
he was the spitting image of a young Mick Jagger
I looked scruffy and
agonised like a teenager asking if he’d like a cup of tea
him investigating spores in the bathroom
we stood at the windowsill
as he explained the science behind
the structure of faulty frames
showing me a leaflet
with tips to halt the rotting
and I thought to myself that this is possibly
the least sexy thing in the entire world to talk about with
the most handsome employee of
Islington Council I’d ever seen
I couldn’t look at a van labelled
housing repairs in the same way again
Sky Dair (she/her) is an artist, writer and researcher from London. She is interested in the intersection and collaging of video, photography, audio, language and books as a vessel to explore the importance of making and culture, and how we can use our creative expression to cherish that which we connect to. She writes a substack called I’ll be loving you delving into the culture, particularly the study of film and books, which brings her joy. Her first poetry collection, It Takes Time to Build Castles, is out now from Worms Publishing. She worked within self publishing from 2020-2024 as a facilitation of her interest in collective emotion and convening; creating a wide range of her artist books and zines which were sold at independent bookshops and book fairs in the U.K. She completed an MA from Central Saint Martins in 2020 and is an alumni of the School of The Damned. The intersections of media are of great importance to her and she finds a lot of enjoyment in bringing new audiences to pieces they may feel are not for them, both formally through education work and informally with friends and via social media.
It Takes Time to Build Castles is a raw and evocative exploration of memory, survival, and self-reclamation. Through a tapestry of poems, Sky Dair crafts a deeply personal yet universally resonant journey—one shaped by familial bonds, the weight of inheritance, and the ever-changing landscape of home.
Set against the backdrop of North London estates, Irish heritage, and transient spaces, the collection navigates the complexities of love and loss, violence and tenderness, exile and belonging. Dair’s voice moves seamlessly between stark reality and lyrical introspection, chronicling a coming-of-age shaped by displacement, trauma, and the search for autonomy.
Themes of matrilineality, class, control, and recovery thread through the work, as Dair grapples with the echoes of the past while forging a future defined on her own terms. Balancing stark honesty with moments of quiet beauty, It Takes Time to Build Castles is both a testament to survival and a love letter to the self—one that refuses to be silenced.
‘Dair has shown us how in the home, words were often used as instruments of torture or control, missiles designed to wound. But as the collection comes to a close, we see how they become the building blocks for a newly autonomous life.’— Octavia Bright, author of This Ragged Grace
Poetry Collection
Released May 2025
With Afterword by Octavia Bright
Sky Dair (she/her) is a writer, filmmaker and musician from London. Her practice focuses on the presence of catharsis within the act of making and thinking. She is interested in the intersection and collaging of video, photography, audio and language as a vessel to explore emotional release.
In 2025, Worms Publishing brings a cohort of experimental writers to the literary top-soil with the introduction of a new series of books, written by London’s emerging visionaries of the literary, dramatic and poetic. Conceptualised with a shared recognition on how words can bridge and bind, we are thrilled to announce the series, Silk. Working across form and genre to showcase writers outside of conventional publishing, Worms endeavours to support and cultivate underrepresented voices with a focus on female and non-binary authors and artists.
Publication date: September 2025 (Second Edition)
Published in the UK by Worms Publishing
Fiction | Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-0369-1367-0
180 × 110 mm | 132 pages
