Sea Creature Regrows Entire Body E-Book

Elaine Beckett

• Herausgeber: Verve Poetry Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 47

Beschreibung

The title of Elaine Beckett's debut collection suggests a process of unstoppable change. Moments of personal and global crisis are juxtaposed, and examined from different perspectives so that her poems reveal how humanity is in a constant state of flux. This is ambitious work, acute in its commitment to the truth of lived experience. Beckett's watch-maker's eye for detail, impeccable ear, and intricate use of poetic form, reveal truths with a compassion that moves her work way beyond the confessional. Arranged in seven short sequences, that spiral round themes of loss, betrayal, delight and re-birth, this is a beautifully wrought collection; at times hard hitting and painful, yet funny and moving, and always surprising. 'Occasionally a poet comes along pretty much fully formed. That is what I felt when I first read Elaine Beckett's poems. Not only her voice -brazen, tender, angry and funny - but how it's held in structures of great poise and resonance. Absurd and revelatory, sometimes painful, these poems, steeped in a dark, ironic lyricism, are to be read and read again.' – Greta Stoddart Debut collection from Faber New Poets 13 author Elaine Beckett, whose Covid related poem Thursday went viral recently after being published in poetry review... Thursday When the dusk comes in as quiet as this as low as this, as dense as this,! like your whole world has gone back to where it began and you wonder how you got into this mess the kind of mess you cannot see an end to as if it may already have ended very badly and all you can hear is the sound of your own name spoken deep inside your own head, it is probably best to step back from whatever kind of brink you imagine you have reached and think about something else, something small and practical like boiling an egg.

Leseprobe

PUBLISHED BY VERVE POETRY PRESS

https://vervepoetrypress.com

[email protected]

All rights reserved

© 2021 Elaine Beckett

The right of Elaine Beckett to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

FIRST PUBLISHED APR 2021

Printed and bound in the UKby Imprint Digital, Exeter

ISBN: 978-1-912565-57-3

ePub ISBN: 978-1-912565-95-5

For Gillian Barr

CONTENTS

Thursday

To Leave you Now

Sea Creature Regrows Entire Body

American People

Stupor

Democracy is Coming

Other Country

Dropping Shoe

Calais, or Part of me is at the Opera

Her Way with Avocados

Rehearsal for a Night-time Scene with Thunder

Zabriskie Point

Instructions

Two Figures on a Bridge

Sometimes

A Mess of Strangers

Certificate

Kitty and Frank

After the War

Falling

Doll

Baby Shawl

Tortoise

Green Suitcase

Appoggiatura

Draft Email

Dear Joni

Norfolk Winter ‘72

Last Visible Dog

That Evening

The Woman who Cries

Moving On

Flowers from Mrs Yeats

Finishing the Peanuts

Letter from Lola

Des Pas sur la Neige

Bodhisattva

Weekend

Tax Return

A Softness

A Few Small Deceits

After Yesterday

How the Watchmaker Talks to Herself

Astonishing Sonatas

This Rush of Love

Garden

Zephyr

Not Forgetting

Cemetery

Two Gorillas

There’s a Certain Type of Driving

Killer Whale

So Now

2084

Lemons

Sea Creature

Regrows Entire Body

Thursday

When the dusk comes in as quiet as this

as low as this, as dense as this,

like your whole world has gone back to where it began

and you wonder how you got into this mess,

the kind of mess you cannot see an end to

as if it may already have ended very badly

and all you can hear is the sound of your own name

spoken deep inside your own head,

it is probably best to step back

from whatever kind of brink you imagine

you have reached

and think about something else,

something small and practical

like boiling an egg.

To Leave You Now

is to leave these petals at your door

for all the facts we might have spilled

concerning damage;

your news impossible to hide,

mine impossible to share

for all the shame that might ensue

so I kept quiet, and so did you,

knowing that to name such things

would grant them irretrievable reality.

I love the way we skirt around such topics

as might teeter on the edge of private hell,

never penetrate each other’s shell,

hope that better things may happen,

and probably will.

Sea Creature Regrows Entire Body

was the headline that stopped me short.

It took a day or two to get back to it

what with all the broken cups.

The weather was fine,

the kind of weather that makes a difference to people

who prefer not to calm down

but react to whatever the next thing is

that they think they ought to manage.

Because you don’t get to decide most things,

they happen through some other force

that in a moment of distraction,

you yourself set in motion:

the brushing of a tiny hair,

the turning of the wrong key in the wrong lock

with all its transparency of knock-on effects

hours, days, even decades later

like why on earth did you marry the person

if you didn’t even like them?

Of course June wasn’t all like that.

Some days were sublime –

freshly milled pepper

and salt and ice-cream

and everything I’ve ever wanted

for the rest of my life.

American People

from an interview with the artist Faith Ringgold

I knew I had to tell it like I saw it

she said,

create images of important aspects

of American life

that affected

me.

American people,

that was the story I was going to tell.

Take Natalie:

a real beauty in her youth,

coal black with long tight braids,

they say she ran a bad house for white men,

a real successful kind of house.

It was difficult

you see,

there were riots in the streets,

all kinds of stuff happening

so when the King had his dream

I decided to weave it through all of my works:

American people sitting down together

at the table of brotherhood.

Back then they didn’t show no interest

in my images

you see,

racism was everywhere, people killing each other,

all kinds of stuff.

A silence opened up:

how would she paint America now?

the interviewer asked:

I would paint it

she said,

I would paint it in multi-multi-multi colours

the way I did before,

only this time

I’d make them more obvious.

Stupor

I search for a table

in this little café town,

restless to read

what has happened

since I last heard the news.

Shadows of anger and fear

darken the already low-pressure day.

Behind the bar

a waiter talks about his acne,

how much it hurts.

I flip the page over again:

correspondents strive

to describe

yet another hellish circumstance

we’ve somehow condoned

through inertia, denial,

cowardice is such an old-

fashioned word these days;

these children

with their scalding throats,

whole families

in frantic suffocation.

All that we know can happen

is happening again –

I sit here, you walk there,

is there no way forward,

not one that can lead

towards hope?

You tell me there’s a problem

with the car, I tell you

that I bought new soap.

We talk about grief,

about stupor.

Democracy is Coming

i.m.: Leonard Cohen, who died on the eve of Trump’s election