Animal People E-Book

Carol Rumens

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

Seitenzahl: 48

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

"The poetry is densely peopled, clamorous with voices, tender, furious and cut with an edge of hilarious clarity… the bravado, the assurance, of the beautiful-but-damned." – Sian Hughes, Poetry Review Animal People is the new collection by distinguished poet Carol Rumens. Often inspired by and infused with the weathers of various seasons of the year, many poems also feature a strong sense of place, whether it be the dramatic mountain rock-scapes of Snowdonia or the gritty streets of London and Hull. The key to the collection is the sequence 'On the Spectrum', which explores what it is to be 'on the autistic spectrum'. Drawing on personal and family experience, this poem is infused with the author's characteristic empathy, curiosity and humanity. There is a strong sense of commemoration in this collection, of time passing and of the challenges of mortality, and also a number of brilliant pieces that are influenced by translations or re-readings of classic works of literature.

Leseprobe

Animal People

I.M. Yurij Georgievich Drobyshev, b. Leningrad,

June, 1932, d. Pentir, Gwynedd, November, 2015.

Seren is the book imprint of

Poetry Wales Press Ltd.

57 Nolton Street, Bridgend, Wales, CF31 3AE

www.serenbooks.com

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

© Carol Rumens 2016

ISBN: 978-1-78172-318-0

ebook: 978-1-78172-319-7

Kindle: 978-1-78172-320-3

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 Image: Joseph Albert “Wettlauf des Igels und des Hasen, 1862”

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

Author Website:www.carolrumens.co.uk

Contents

On Standby

An Artistic Family

Easter Snow

The Teacher and the Ghosts

Spring Forward, Fall Back: a Gwynedd Skein

The Homeless Ship

March Morning, Pearson Park

Remote Bermudas

1. School Trip

2. Keats’s Reach

3. The Campus of Time-Enough

4. Lumen de Lumine

The Big Bang Year

Her to Apollo

Glosa on ‘Woman of Spring’

Two Birthday Cards

1. Under Moel Rhiwen

2. White Night

Fire, Stone, Snowdonia

Praying with the Imam at Summerfade

The Reddish Wheel-Barrow

Happy Seventieth-Birthday Blues, Mr Zimmerman

All Souls’ Saturday Night

Owls of the Ukraine

The Search

John Rodker Composes a Cold Elegy for Isaac Rosenberg

Pyramid Text

Zootoca Vivipara

House Clearance

Song of The Obsolete

Home Thoughts from the Cow-Shed

Figurine

Danae, Dinarii

It’s Time for the Weather!

A Christmas Stocking

Happy Christmas, Sister Dympna

Small Facts

In Memory of a Rationalist

From an Evening Walk-Diary

Marshalsea Quadrille

A Few Study-Notes

Hamlet

The Ship of State

Footnote

Three Fado

Laundry Blue

The Hare and the Hedgehog

On the Spectrum

About Animal People

Acknowledgements

On Standby

Pass me that small pencil, sharpened nicely

At both ends, a pencil with two eyes,

And up for anything – a screed, a scribble.

The gold and navy stripes, still visible,

Might be school uniform – the low-slung tie

Of anti-fashion, mocking and awry.

The pupils do their time; some pencils sidle

Off desks and drop and vanish. But the word

Is out, this pencil says, when a bright-voiced

Young teacher names the mist in someone’s head.

And the kid stares, and sees the point at last.

A pencil starts from scratch, like anyone.

It knows hard graft, despair and knuckled tension,

A shadow flickering like a footballer’s –

Designed for transfer. It diminishes,

But leaves hard copy, proofed by crossings-out,

Forensics of the rubber, and the bruise

Of graphite on our fingers. If you’ve never

Nibbled at a pencil-top, you’ve never

Tasted words.

Pass me the pencil! Yes,

I’ll leave it by the keyboard, just in case…

An Artistic Family

We were girl-wives with an idea of beauty so simple

it featured cushions and coffee-mugs, and, once,

the matching of wallpaper to high aspiration –

a frieze. On bands of coarse cord-trim she pearled

French knots – pale green on blue, maroon on grey; she plotted

hearth-rugs in black-and-white geometries famous

as Modern Art. I favoured stripped-pine floorboards,

clashed with acrylics; she preferred Axminster’s

Turkey-red with the dark-oak Jacobean

of nineteen-thirties marriage. Both of us relished

the irony of Woolworth’s ‘wrought-iron’ planters.

She liked to quote what a teacher said about her:

“She’ll have a beautiful home. She’s so artistic.”

The beauty we could buy was decoration’s

trivia, and we laughed about that, too.

“If you want a beautiful home, marry a wealthy man.”

Neither of us did, but we went on being artistic.

I see it, more and more often,

and farther back: – the drip of Liquid Lino

on the beaks and wings of her customised Flying Ducks,

the squirrel buttons, blue, for a girl’s first cardie,

and the delicate green-and-gold Greek-key design

of our famous frieze, the best in the Wallpaper Book,

lifting the child-long day in her tiny dining-room.

Easter Snow

“There was a man of double deed

Sowed his garden full of seed...”

Anon.

“And so I’ve found my native country…”

Attila József

There was a man of double deed

Sowed his garden full of snow,

Lit a stove he could not feed,

Sired a child he could not grow,

Who fashioned birds from wooden blocks,

And when their wings fused flight to dark,

And when the dark swept through the locks,

Fetched a book and made an ark.

But who could sail so deep a ship,

Or marry beast to bolting beast,

Dance as he would his flimsy whip

Over the backs of the deceased?

Poets must tell the truth, you said:

The poor must, too, although they lie.

We listen at your iron bed,

Under the tunnel of the sky,

And ask you softly what you need –

Blue roller-skates? A football team?

But you are far and far indeed.

And all the stumbling magi bring

Is the smoke-haze of a dream,

A floating girl, a greasy bear,

A courtyard echo-echoing

The snowy wing-beats of your heart

Towards the deficit of air

Predicted in your natal chart.

The Teacher and the Ghosts

afterA Christmas Carolby Charles Dickens

There were two, a boy and a girl.

He tried to say they were fine children

but the words choked. A lie of such magnitude.

This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want.

He sat up, startled. The room was itself, bright;

the time on his wrist as it should be.

Boxing-Day trade outside. Girls and boys

in their smart affordable brands,

shopping, texting, playing; time

on their side. Beware them both and all

of their degree but most of all beware