Category: Small Books
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Tree-Wheel
In the rain its knuckled bark
has the gloss of polish,a bottle-green patina.
There isn’t a skull-head for pivot,
tension is held in back of its palm
it fists into the soil,raising it up.
Beach
Dragged impasto of seaweed
aches against silver waves.I watch the wormholes
ferry their glitter of sand
in kaleidoscopes.
‘Tree-Wheel ‘ and ‘Beach’ by C. Murray is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.- First published at Bone Orchard Poetry as part of a sequence.
- Image is ‘Willow trees’ by Pieter Wenning
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“I wanted to read or hear the narrative of someone else – a woman and a poet – who has gone here and been there. Who had lifted the kettle to a gas-stove. Who had set her skirt out over a chair, near to the clothes dryer, to have it without creases for the morning. Who had made the life meet the work and had set it down.
Eavan Boland , from Object Lessons. publ. Carcanet 1995.
As ever, thanks to my readers who keep coming back to read, to make suggestions, and to send poems. My feeling is that overall 2012 has been a good year for women poets. There have been the usual scant begrudging reviews, there is still a visibility issue in terms of how many women are published, but poets like Alice Oswald, Ros Barber, Carol Ann Duffy, Eavan Boland, and all the women here published have most definitely placed the woman-poet in her room, on the street, and in the bookshop where young women and upcoming poets may find her if they care to look.
I have added a list of blogs, journals, reviews and interesting sites to the end this post. I often link to my favourite blogs and sites directly in the posts. This year, I mention in particular Bone Orchard Poetry, CanCan, and WurminApfel. My perennial favourite websites are Jacket2, Guernica, The Harriet Blog (Poetry Foundation), Lemon Hound and Poetry Ireland
The easiest way to do this is to link the poets and translators published this year of 2012 as they were published. There is a handy monthly (2008-2012) archive to your right (and up the page a wee bit)
The image is ‘Life or Theatre’ by Charlotte Salomon
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Thanks to Mariela Baeva for her legacy project In The Hug Of Arms , an anthology of writing dedicated to the child victims of conflict. I am honoured to be a part of this work with a poem that was initially published in a group called Two Songs of War and a Lyric, by the SouthWord Journal at the Munster Literature Centre. The Poem Gernika was written to be read out at the 75th commemoration of the Guernica Massacre in 2012.
About Angelita
The image Mariela Baeva chose for her cover is of a small girl from Anzio called Angelita who died from shrapnel wounds at the end of World War II. The contributors to the Anthology are from, Uganda, Somalia, Ireland, Russia, Belgium, Angola, the municipality of Anzio (Italy), Pakistan, Lebanon and Bulgaria. The texts are in English, French, Urdu, Somali, Russian (with translations into English).
- There’s more information about the Anthology at this link.
- PEN International newsletter is here , PEN
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‘Die Schwangere’
~ Pregnant in Karlsruhe ~
The other poets drink damson schnapps
from thistle-head glasses,My baby flicker-kicks
with all five ounces of her weight,
with all four inches of her length.I dream her hand
pipping from the egg of my belly
like a wing through shell,
I hold her embryonic fingers,
thrilling at her light touch.Delighting in my blooming belly,
I feel my nestled passenger,
she flicks and settles, settles and kicks;
her cells gather, graceful as an origami swan
in perfect folds and re-folds.In perfect folds and re-folds
her cells gather, graceful as an origami swan
she flicks and settles, settles and kicks;
I feel my nestled passenger
delighting in my blooming belly.Thrilling at her light touch
I hold her embryonic fingers,
like a wing through shell,
pipping from the egg of my belly,
I dream her hand.With all four inches of her length.
with all five ounces of her weight,
my baby flicker-kicks.From thistle-head glasses
the other poets drink damson schnapps..Die Schwangere
~ pregnant in Karlsruhe ~ is © Nuala Ní Chonchúir. The Juno Charm , 2011.
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About the Juno Charm
“In the tapestry that is The Juno Charm, award-winning writer Nuala Ní Chonchúir explores the worlds of two marriages – one waning, one waxing – and the pain of pregnancy loss and fertility struggles. This is an intimate book where the reader is taken by the emotional resonance of the poems, as much as by the exploration of the use of amulets and charms. The poems travels comfortably from County Galway – as in the wry Frida Kahlo Visits Ballinasloe – to Manhattan’s skyscrapers; and from the Seine in Paris to Dublin’s Liberty Hall. Ní Chonchúir once again employs her signature sensual frankness in poems of love and the body (‘I am the pomegranate / and you, the peacock // My seedy, red-pulped core / glistens with juice, / awaits your entrance’). Sometimes irreverent, always vivid, this is poetry ripe with imaginative possibility and wit. ” From Salmon PoetryThanks to Nuala Ní Chonchúir for supporting Poethead with her poems and translations.
- Her poems appear here and here on the blog.
- I also included Nuala Ni Chonchúir in a celebration of Irish Women’s writing on Bloomsday 2012.
- WomenRuleWriter
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Olivia Guest of Jonathan Clowes Ltd. has informed me today that they are willing to extend my Doris Lessing licence and so I have returned the poems here. Thanks to Olivia and Jonathan Clowes for an extended opportunity to share Doris Lessing’s work on Poethead.
I spent some time in 2011 looking for permission to host two Doris Lessing poems on Poethead. In 2011 Lessing’s literary agents, Jonathan Clowes Ltd. very kindly permitted a limited copyright for ‘Fable’ and ‘Oh Cherry Trees You Are Too White For My Heart’ to be carried on this blog for a longer period.
I have blogged about Doris Lessing, Nobel Laureate, writer and poet both on this blog and on Open Salon blogs. I thought to publish the Lessing search-engine terms and statistics since my publication of the poems in 2011.
Doris Lessing’s Poems, statistics (to date) - Poems by Doris Lessing : 1,363 Views
- I have been reading ‘Fourteen Poems’ by Doris Lessing this week : 783 views
- ‘Fable’ and ‘Oh Cherry Trees You Are Too White For my Heart’ by Doris Lessing : 445 views
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The Fairies’ Lullaby.
My mirth and merriment, soft and sweet art thou.
Child of the race of Conn art thou ;
My mirth and merriment, soft and sweet art thou.
Of the race of Coll and Conn art thou.-
My smooth green rush, my laughter sweet,
My little plant in the rocky cleft.
Were it not for the spell on thy tiny feet.
Thou wouldst not here be left.
Not thou.
Of the race of Coll and Conn art thou.
My laughter, sweet and low art thou ;
As you crow on my knee,
I would lift you with me.
Were it not for the mark that is on your feet,
I would lift you away,
and away,
with me.
Translated by Eleanor Hull (1860-1935)
from, The Smile and the Tear ; Poems and Songs of Ireland. Ed. Seán McMahon, Publ. 2011 by Londubh Books.The Adulteress Song
Little white bug
who comes at the wrong time,
at home is the father
of the crying child.Little black bug
with snowy wings
at home is the father
of the child who sings.from : The adulteress song that is sung in Alba de Tormes
Fairies by Charles Rennie MacIntosh , 1898 First Published in GB by Marion Boyars Publishers Limited 1980. translations by Christopher Maurer.
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There is a new moon
and the heavy clouds are calm,
the wind has dropped,
yet there is still a tap-tapping
on your window.
Does it bother you?
That shiver, as if something’s breath
has grazed, raised the hairs on your neck.
Why do you rise and draw the curtains
tight across the chink?
Look out –
the shadows steal towards you.
What is it startles next door’s dog,
its barking, sudden to start, sudden to cease?
Not the cat,
she’s hissing beneath your bed.
Who- or what – is watching ?
Believe what you will,
that crunch of gravel,
that scuffle at your sill
is not a fox or swooping owl.
Did you lock the back door ? Are you sure ?
The crows are roosting in high branches,
it is not they who claw through your bins
for numbers, dates, addresses,
leaving scattered shreds,
knocking that broken pot
you find in the morning.
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© Kate Dempsey , all rights reserved.from Some Poems, Published 2011. Some Poems ,a Moth Little Edition.
Image , Portrait of Maud Cook by Thomas Eakins, 1895
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‘Sestina’ by Dante Alighieri
I have come, alas, to the great circle of shadow,
to the short day and to the whitening hills,
when the colour is all lost from the grass,
though my desire will not lose its green,
so rooted is it in this hardest stone,
that speaks and feels as though it were a woman.And likewise this heaven-born woman
stays frozen, like the snow in shadow,
and is unmoved, or moved like a stone,
by the sweet season that warms all the hills,
and makes them alter from pure white to green,
so as to clothe them with the flowers and grass.When her head wears a crown of grass
she draws the mind from any other woman,
because she blends her gold hair with the green
so well that Amor lingers in their shadow,
he who fastens me in these low hills,
more certainly than lime fastens stone.Her beauty has more virtue than rare stone.
The wound she gives cannot be healed with grass,
since I have travelled, through the plains and hills,
to find my release from such a woman,
yet from her light had never a shadow
thrown on me, by hill, wall, or leaves’ green.I have seen her walk all dressed in green,
so formed she would have sparked love in a stone,
that love I bear for her very shadow,
so that I wished her, in those fields of grass,
as much in love as ever yet was woman,
closed around by all the highest hills.The rivers will flow upwards to the hills
before this wood, that is so soft and green,
takes fire, as might ever lovely woman,
for me, who would choose to sleep on stone,
all my life, and go eating grass,
only to gaze at where her clothes cast shadow.Whenever the hills cast blackest shadow,
with her sweet green, the lovely woman
hides it, as a man hides stone in grass..
Sestina by Dante AlighieriThe image at the base of this post is from the Wikipedia Site discussion on the Sestina form . I am adding here a Poets.org discussion on the form used by both poets in the above post . I wanted to focus on content , which is after all what poetry is about (that and adaptions/metamorphosis/shape-shifting and code !).
‘Sestina’ by Elizabeth Bishop
September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,It’s time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle’s small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanacon its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.Sestina by Elizabeth Bishop
Listen to the poem here , Sestina . Sestina by Elizabeth Bishop is published in Questions of Travel, which is discussed here in Modern American Poetry
The following tables are from Poets.org and Wikipedia showing the Sestina form in its essence,
1. ABCDEF
2. FAEBDC
3. CFDABE
4. ECBFAD
5. DEACFB
6. BDFECA
7. (envoi) ECA or ACE
Chris Murray 