A Second Whisper E-Book

Lynne Hjelmgaard

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

Seitenzahl: 37

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

A Second Whisper is a thoughtful and sensitive collection of poems that reflect the changing identities of a woman: in motherhood, in widowhood, in friendship and grief. There are elegies to the loss of her mentor and partner, the poet Dannie Abse in 2014 which are a tribute to their deep friendship. There are also poems to her late husband who died in 2006 and for their children and for relationships from the author's past in New York City and Denmark. The poems are both elegiac and celebratory, they move and change tone as the author travels to the past and negotiates through the geography of grief and feelings of displacement in London and finally, opens to her new life in the present. Such a beautiful collection that I read it at one stretch. In language whose easy music sounds like thinking, these poems tell the story of a special late love after bereavement, as well as of loves of all kinds, and the very experience of being alive. – Gillian Clarke

Leseprobe

A Second Whisper

for Dannie

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 Lynne Hjelmgaard to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

© Lynne Hjelmgaard, 2019.

ISBN: 978-1-78172-554-2 ebook: 978-1-78172-560-3 Kindle: 978-1-78172-561-0

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 painting: by Jan Petersen – egg tempera

Author photograph: Jane Allan

Printed in Bembo by Latimer Trend & Company Ltd, Plymouth.

Contents

Introduction:The Empress of Odessa

Speak to Me Again at Dusk

It Was the Day They Put the Clocks Back

The Gift

A Second Whisper

This Is Where You Come to Me

It Felt Foreign at First

At the Event

Afterthoughts

At Villa Borghese

Visitor

With Dannie

A Thief Is in the House

Green, Green I love you Green

Three Tree Poem

Instructions for the Coastal Walk from Clarach to Borth

To a Chestnut Tree

On Willow Road

London, Forever Tired in Your Arms

Hampstead Poem

Living in London

The Couple Downstairs

Rhea Americana

Keepsakes/A Prism

Ode to Blue Jeans

Ladybirds

Writer’s Retreat

You, Lizard-like

Death in the Taverna

Stone and Spider

In Gainsborough Gardens

The Brooklyn Bridge, a Fish-foul Smell of the East River, Grey

Mother

Winter Gives Me…

My Daughter Tries to Reach Me on the Phone

Berith

In a Sailing Dingy with Berith

The Exchange

My Children Walk Ahead

Bully in the Playground

Soper’s Hole

ONCE

Pieve a Castello

Ode to a Danish Lamp

Mountains at Sea

27th and 6th

Degnemøse Alle

Ellinge Lyng

I Can Almost Sense the Divide

As We Silently Agree

Scorpion Hill

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Introduction:The Empress of Odessa

Starving, at L’artista, I ate my whole plate of Pasta ai Funghi. Surprised, you said ‘Kinahora’ (the kid knows how to eat).Yiddish. I hadn’t heard that word since childhood. After lunch you read from The Presence and poems about silence.You had asked me to read my own poems of loss. Later, dazed, I got on the wrong train.We discovered a shared Jewish heritage: your brother Leo, MP; my grandfather Leo, trumpet player from Odessa; my mother Katherine, mathematician; your much-loved mother, Kate. A cousin Frieda, an aunt Frieda, other common stories of loss: uncles, cousins, aunts, our fathers, mothers and you, during the war.We also shared our grief for respective spouses from long, happy marriages. And for a time it was the four of us.Though one day, without ceremony, we noted their absence.

It felt like I had joined a large family, especially when I week-ended at your house: the photographs of your wife Joan, children and grand-children, an enormous poetry library, calligraphies of your framed poems, paintings by well-known artists, poetry friends you introduced me to.The much-travelled suitcase I used between your house and mine, packing and unpacking weekly, is gone now. (When we met I invited you, jokingly, to come along.) You didn’t feel the need to travel except to see Cardiff City games.Weekly letters and invitations to read your poetry meant you rarely had to venture far from Hodford Road.The world came to you. After a while you insisted, when some festival or venue called, that Lynne Hjelmgaard read her poems too or you wouldn’t come.You were moved by my genuine happiness for your good reviews. I was moved when you gave me your yellow rose in front of the crowd at Hay.

Joan wanted to throw away a suede coat you had brought back from a teaching year at Princeton in the 70s. She thought it was old and ragged, was probably right. But I quickly adopted it, especially on frosty nights in your cold kitchen where you cooked meals and had the table ready on Friday nights to welcome me home.There was our age difference: the Kosher butcher asking,‘How’s your father?’ Your worry I’d meet someone younger; my fear of your impending death – you, a healthy eighty-five. After a few years you bought me a ring: a delicate amethyst stone we chose together to mark a relationship we couldn’t explain, just felt, deeply.