Wild Persistence E-Book

Katrina Naomi

• Herausgeber: Seren
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 60

Beschreibung

Katrina Naomi's Wild Persistence is a confident and persuasive collection of poems. The first poem 'Anti-Ambient' warns us to be on guard for the off-guard, to suspend our expectations of pure realism and to stay awake for what comes next. Initially, a move from London to Cornwall sparks poems that query and celebrate the natural world. London is mourned and also derided: "you'd taken on airs/ become grandiose with the possibilities of capital." Yet the poem also admits that the choice of a move was made by serendipitous chance: "somewhere I'd visited long ago on a rainy night, playing pool/ in a pub near a seaside bus station."Though never didactic, the poetic voice convinces us of the need to live well, to take time to celebrate a birthday, make love, consider an artwork, muse over the biography of someone admirable. This also means that we need to come face to face with some of the darker aspects of our experience, in Naomi's case the loss of a father through divorce when she was seven, and the illness experienced by her sister and partner. Another section of poems that deals with the aftermath of an attempted rape. Naomi's poetic voice is full of invigoratingly fresh outrage and is unforgiving at a distance of years to the casual passers-by who did nothing to help. She also casts a cold eye on the assailant, whom she ultimately pities, imagining him now 'fat and in his fifties' and destroyed by his predilection for violence.'...this is a liberating reminder that "there are different ways to live"...nothing can suppress the wild and quirky energy at play... Wild Persistence is the joyous affirmation we need.' – PBS"A collection of humour and revelry, lit by the repeated flare of violence and warmed by the unapologetic need to live the life of one's choosing." – New Welsh Review

Leseprobe

Wild Persistence

for Penelope Shuttle

A mí se me hace cuento que existiera un lugar al que pertenecer, un árbol sin raíces’ – Andrés Neuman.

Hard to believe there might exist a place to belong, a tree without roots – Andrés Neuman (translated by Richard Gwyn).

Wild Persistence

Katrina Naomi

Seren is the book imprint of

Poetry Wales Press Ltd.

57 Nolton Street, Bridgend, Wales, CF31 3AE

www.serenbooks.com

facebook.com/SerenBooks

twitter@SerenBooks

The right of Katrina Naomi to be identified as

the author of this work has been asserted in accordance

with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

© Katrina Naomi, 2020.

ISBN: 978-1-78172-581-8

ebook: 978-1-78172-582-5

A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without

the prior permission of the copyright holder.

The publisher acknowledges the financial assistance of the Welsh Books Council.

Cover photograph:‘Martha Graham – Celebration (trio)’ 1937 by Barbara Morgan.

Author photograph: Tim Ridley.

Author website: www.katrinanaomi.co.uk

Author twitter: @KatrinaNaomi

Printed in Bembo by Severn, Gloucester.

Contents

Anti- ambient

London: A Reply

How to Celebrate a Birthday

At Noongallas

Swaling on Boscathow

Bardhonek May Hwisk Hi Ynno Hy Fows Dhemmedhyans Meurgerys

Poem in Which She Wears Her Favourite Wedding Dress

Maybe Owls

Dualism: A Manifesto

Elemental

Interpretation

Open Letter

Mentor

Spared

After the Shock of your Photo on Facebook

On Fucking

On Suitors

Beat

What Arrival Feels Like

How Is It

As if This were Someone Else’s Drama

Holidayish

You Told Yourself

Ghazal for Tim

The University

House as Tent

The Gift

The Table my Father Made

The Snug

How Religion Works

Taking Off Billy Collins’s Clothes

The Only Truly Memorable New Year’s Eve

Elsewhere

Boasting Sonnet

The Smiling of Children While They Sleep

This Isn’t a Yellow Cake

The Beach Couldn’t be Found

I Saw Them Making Love

What I Will Tell my Daughter

The Reveal

Three Horses

It was Nothing to Do with Any of You

Circling in Flippers

If I Were a Different Person I Might be Able to Forgive

The Blade

She’d Feel Differently

Not Really About Snow

Hello Wilhemina

Dent-de-Lion: Our First Farm

You Can’t Know of This

Talisman

My Sister and the Heavy Magic

All Those Years

The Sun & Me

The Future Ends Soon

Transistor

Yellow Eyes, the Usual Big Teeth

The Guns

Acknowledgements

Anti- ambient

A joy of noise

like a whole fucking Motörhead

splitting the monochrome

sparking a choice

of dark or light

a crossingrevelling

in a migraine

of soundx

The shadow

self asserts

stepping out

of the gunsmoke

ignoring the safety of grey

There are different ways to live

London: A Reply

A year on and I can’t hear you.

You have left me, dear London,

like I left you. I could drop this tiff,

walk the seven minutes to your big white bus,

climb aboard. I know you’ve tried,

you’ve sent me images through the ether: Soho

early morning, Hyde Park in the sun,

Charing Cross Road’s bookshops

before the chain of dull cafés,

but in this reaching out, you’ve made yourself

so much quieter, perhaps in the way

two people mirror each other,

adjusting the tilt of their heads,

how they move their arms, take on accents.

Yours is a kind of wooing, dear London,

and while I cried and cried at leaving you,

you’d taken on airs, become grandiose

with the possibilities of capital. And I saw

something new, somewhere I’d visited

long ago on a rainy night, playing pool

in a pub near a seaside bus station.

Had I lost the game that night, perhaps

I’d never have come here –

that’s how decisions are made. I’m sorry,

dear London, it’s over. But you’ll go on

reinventing yourself, building taller,

as if you could see me from one of your towers.

How to Celebrate a Birthday

Turn off your computer, you’re not at work

today. There will be drink and food and friends.

There may or may not be cake. You’ll also want,

as well as presents and good sex, a little time alone.

Not to look back but to think about who you are.

A year is immaterial but it’s what we understand;

a better time than New Year to think of who you are,

what you love and what you might change.

It’s important to feel a little bit special,

even before the cava.And there has to be cava.

You can let go of any worry – like the string of a balloon

that may or may not have a number of years frosted

against the pink. Let it go, let the years go,

let who you’d hoped you’d be by now go. Celebrate

who you are. Put up your cards, display your gifts,

though the vegan fudge needs to sit in the fridge,

it can cosy up to what’s left of the cava. Smile

at whoever you meet. Swim in the sea, with or without

friends, consider how each wave greets you. Dance

to your favourite Sister Sledge, the neighbours

shouldn’t mind too much, for it’s your birthday.

Allow yourself to be treated for lunch, then walk

home across the moor, making time for a snooze

in the sun – inevitable after all the cava. Make love

before you go out tonight – you’ll become

more beautiful, this is what people say. And,

if you can – and you can – dance some more.

Dancing shows us who we really are

and who we might become. Go on, dance.

And look up at the stars on your way

back, look at them for longer than usual.

Find one that might burn for you; name it.

At Noongallas

for Kenza

A brooding sky,

cows stumbling down a hill.

So much life and death on a farm.

And out of this huge dampness, a thin cry

like a mewling kitten or a tropical bird –

part West Cornwall, part West Africa –

something undefinable.

We spoke of you last night

having no name for you then.

As we talked, a meteor shower, an omen

short-lived but powerful. And your father said:

At home, we believe the stars burst

into the atmosphere before falling to the sea.

We felt we were taken somewhere else –

a campsite, beers, talk in English and French –

and that belly still, silent, waiting

to be heard across the sodden fields,

your mother’s waters having run all night.

Your mother’s waters having run all night

to be heard across the sodden fields

and that belly still, silent, waiting.

A campsite, beers, talk in English and French.

We felt we were taken somewhere else –

into the atmosphere before falling to the sea.

At home, we believe the stars burst –

short-lived but powerful.And your father said,

as we talked, a meteor shower – an omen –

having no name for you.Then

we spoke of you last night:

something undefinable,

part West Cornwall, part West Africa,

like a mewling kitten or a tropical bird.

And out of this huge dampness, a thin cry –

so much life and death on a farm,

cows stumbling down a hill,

a brooding sky.