Somehow E-Book

Helen Calcutt

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

Seitenzahl: 17

Beschreibung

In September 2017, Helen Calcutt's brother Matthew took his own life. He was 40 years old. '… the phone rang / and when I answered it / you'd killed / yourself, and that was the start / of you being dead.' This is the starting point of an astonishing new pamphlet of poems by Helen Calcutt. At times harrowing; at others hopeful – always deeply felt and beautifully realised. These poems display the poise and precision of a poet already at the height of her powers, writing the un-writable, weaving the terrible into something relatable and filled with the light of understanding. How do we survive the tumultuous presence of grief? How does the trauma of losing a loved one to suicide affect, our identity, our creativity, and our ability to love? How – in a world shattered by incomparable change and severe loss – do we build a life from the wreckage? Because we do. Somehow, we do.

Leseprobe

PUBLISHED BY VERVE POETRY PRESS

https://vervepoetrypress.com

[email protected]

All rights reserved

© 2020 Helen Calcutt

The right of Helen Calcutt 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 SEP 2020

Printed and bound in the UK by Positive Print, Birmingham

ISBN: 978-1-912565-42-9 ePub ISBN: 978-1-912565-85-6

Cover Art Credit: Katherine Sheers

CONTENTS

Now my brother has died

Something terrible happened

Light

Waving, or drowning?

A conversation with my daughter about my brother’s suicide

Wonderful

Found

Bath time

City birds

Sing dove

A mountain that is your grief you can’t utter

Rope

Brother blowing

Grief is like a miracle

Wind

The Blossom Tree

Acknowledgements

for Matthew

Somehow

Now my brother has died

the flowers have opened. The sound of a

river is moving in my head,

the startled flowers –

Or is it blood? heart? – their ephemeral

mouths opening and closing. How dare they

grant me this steady life. The strength of it.

I want a stillness, still I

go on, like the soul of a river, living loud

with other rivers, longing for murdered roses and

the resurrection of a hanging

clock.

How dare this life

make me want the things I’d die to

love, but river-bound, never could.

Something terrible happened

the phone rang

and when I answered

it you’d killed

yourself, and that was the start

of you being dead.

All I could think about

was hurting someone

I loved. I hurled myself

into the glowing

garden,

I tore at the leaves

then the light. I told

my daughter not

to cry (though I

should have kissed her eyes)

and for days I couldn’t

speak. Dry thorns, dirt

on my cheeks, I looked

for signs of rain,

sudden clouds,

anything

that held your

death

in the clement weather.