A Gift of Rivers E-Book

Kate Foley

• Herausgeber: Arachne Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 20

Beschreibung

Kate Foley is a much published and respected poet with many awards to her name. This, her 8th collection is made from meeting, migration and marriage: poems reflecting the journey of one poet and her wife, across linguistic and geographical boundaries - and with Brexit in the offing, it's far from over yet.

Leseprobe

Kate Foley is a widely published, prize-winning poet who has read in many UK and European locations. Her first collection, Soft Engineering, was short listed for best first collection at Aldeburgh.

Her working life has ranged from delivering babies to conserving delicate archaeological material. She became Head of English Heritage’s scientific and technical research laboratories. Although she has always written poetry it wasn’t until she gave up the day job that she began to publish more widely.

She now lives with her wife between Amsterdam and Suffolk, where she performs, writes, edits, leads workshops and whenever possible works with artists in other disciplines.

A Gift of Rivers is her eighth full collection.

Some of these poems were first collected and privately printed in a monograph as a birthday gift for Kate’s wife, Tonnie, with the help of Jeremy Greenwood.

Also by Kate Foley from Arachne Press:

The Don’t Touch Garden (available as print and audio)

CONTENTS

Permission

Wishbone

Catechisms

A Loose Configuration

A Little Local Love

Like a Glove

Ordinary Exile

Foreigners

Mothers and Fathers

Unmasked

From The Silver Rembrandt

Sticks

Becoming Enough

The Quail Syndrome

Jailbreak

Sheep May Safely

Here’s The Church Where’s The Steeple

Back to Basics

A Gift Of Rivers

Wives

When I Lie Next To You In Sleep

I am Your Second Language

In The Dog Watches

Sleeping Together

Heart Surgery

To the Field Of Reeds

for Tonnie

PERMISSION

Don’t need permission,

not from god,

any god,

even She,

not the Virgin,

(though soft spot conceded),

not the nuns,

starched into their icing-

sugar knickers –

(‘…you wouldn’t want to do something unfresh!’)…

not the dove,

who never turned up

when the Bishop said he would,

not priests, politicians, Public

Opinion – not even Mum,

though I wished she’d Come Out

and admitted she knew.

Don’t need permission – only,

yours,

and hardest of all,

from a place I never

visited before,

from me,

to love you.

WISHBONE

‘Make me a poet’ I say quietly

to the small torn knuckle of gristle

and bone I’ve won.

More ‘poetic’ to wish on the evening star

that comes out whether or not you’re there

to see. My bone’s

torn from the delicate vee

your fingers fish from the washing up.

As we pull it quivers

with the unspoken weight of wishes, yours

and mine. Is poetry to speak what can’t be said

or catch its fugitive shape in a net of words?