Carnival Edge: New & Selected Poems E-Book

Katherine Gallagher

• Herausgeber: Arc Publications
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 76

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

Carnival Edge: New & Selected Poems is Katherine Gallagher's third book from Arc, and draws together the best work from five of her previous collections, together with a substantial body of new work. Gallagher is a prolific and popular poet, and this comprehensive new collection will delight her many devotees, both in the UK and in her native Australia. "Katherine Gallagher has an aesthetic purity which combines introspection with an outward focus... Her verse is sometimes simply beautiful, at other times tragically moving, but always technically brilliant." Envoi "Gallagher has always been a poet of quiet observation, meditating on her experiences as a traveler or watching small domestic moments... There can be no doubt that Gallagher's poetry has become more confident and complex over time. The early poems, usually no longer than a page, meditate on an observation or a memory, while her more recent work is more ambitious." Australian Book Review "No word is wasted in Katherine's poems; she effortlessly glides into metaphor, playful inversions and unexpected turns of thought. She has an artist's eye for colour and line, a musician's ear for rhythm, tone and key, and a poet's skill in selection of the best word." Anna Avebury "Carnival Edge not only withstands repeated reading, it invites it. It is a work that demands that it be taken up by poets and explored, so that it can reveal its richnesses, and show further ways in which poetry can be explored... having read Carnival Edge a number of times, I can only say that these prospects excite me enormously." The Australian Reader Katherine Gallagher is a widely-acclaimed poet with six books published as well as four chapbooks. Born in Australia, Gallagher has lived and worked in London since 1979. She has been an active force in the community, giving poetry readings, running workshops (for adults and children), judging poetry competitions, and participating in poetry festivals. Her work has been widely reviewed. Gallagher also translates from the French and her own poetry has been translated into French, German, Italian, Romanian, and Serbian. Her two previous collections are Tigers on a Silk Road and Circus-Apprentice. This book is also available as a eBook. Buy it from Amazon here.

Leseprobe

CARNIVAL EDGE

Published by Arc Publications

Nanholme Mill, Shaw Wood Road

Todmorden OL14 6DA, UK

www.arcpublications.co.uk Copyright © Katherine Gallagher, 2010

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Design by Tony Ward 978 1906570 42 2 pbk

978 1906570 43 9 hbk

978 1908376 95 4 ebk ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

‘Seeing the Hand’ was published in The Best Australian Poems 2007 (Black Inc).

Acknowledgements are also due to the Editors of the following magazines and newspapers: in the UK – Acumen, ARTEMISPoetry, Fourteen, The Interpreter’sHouse, Magma,Poetry News, Poetry Review, Trespass (UK); in Australia – The Australian Book Review, Quadrant, Southerly; in India – Prosopisia.

The author is grateful to The Society of Authors (UK) for a Foundation Grant in 2008 towards the completion of this book.

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part of this book may take place without the written permission of Arc Publications.

The cover painting is by Pierre Vella.Editor for the UK and Ireland: John W. Clarke

CARNIVAL

E D G E

NEW & SELECTED POEMS

Katherine Gallagher

2010

for Bernard

CONTENTS

fromTHE EYE’S CIRCLE

Shapes within a Pattern

fromPASSENGERS TO THE CITY

Song for an Unborn

Firstborn

For Julien at Six Weeks

At the Playground

Distances

The Trapeze-Artist’s First Performance

Itinerants

Zelda Fitzgerald Practising Ballet

The Survivor

Maldon, Old Mining Town

Homecoming

Wimmera Windscreen

Leaving

Getting the Electricity On

Woman in a Tableau

Chartres Cathedral

The Long Reach Out of War

Unknown Soldier

Dividing-line

Domestic

Momentums

Passengers to the City

The White Boat

Concerning the Fauna

Night in the Suburbs

Kandinsky Journey

The Magic of Hands

November, Bois de Vincennes

Lost

fromFISH-RINGS ONWATER

International

Firstborn

A Girl’s Head

Nettie Palmer to Frank Wilmot (‘Furnley Maurice’)

Eastville, 1939

Relic

Ghosts

Plane-Journey Momentums

Art Class on Observatory Hill, Sydney

Near Keith, South Australia

Scene on the Loire

To Joe: In Memoriam

Homecoming

Alone on a Beach

First Time

The Affair

Lines for an Ex

Poem for the Executioners

Political Prisoners

After Käthe Kollwitz – ‘The Face of War’

Girl teasing Cat with Mouse

Tree Planting at Alexandra Park

fromTIGERS ON THE SILK ROAD

1969

In Memoriam for my Brother

Dancing

Jet Lag

Frost Country

1942

River Murray Reunion

My Mother’s Garden

The Gondola at Santa Maria dei Miracoli, Venice

Poem for a Shallot

Reckoning

The Ash Tree

Thirteen

Knebworth Park

A Visit to the War Memorial, Canberra

Slippage

The Lines on Her Palm

Hunger

Poinsettias

fromCIRCUS-APPRENTICE

Entente

Laanecoorie

The Year of the Tree

Hedge

Summer Odyssey

From the Sahel

Winter Hyacinths

Hybrid

Thinking of My Mother on the Anniversary of Her Death

Gwen John swims the Channel

Circus-Apprentice

Keeper

GM Scientist

Tanka for a Hero

Priests

Girl on a Bolting Horse

Nomad

On the Pass from Kathmandu

At Delphi

Love Cinquains

The Lesson

Dancing on the Farm

The Last War

Itinerant

Cloud-eye

After Kandinsky –

Grey Forms(1922)

In the Black Square(1923)

Horizontal(1924)

Contrasting Sounds(1924)

Blue Painting(1924)

Yellow, Red, Blue(1925)

Balancing(1925)

Tension in Red(1926)

Homage to Grohmann(1926)

Counterweights(1926)

Points along the Arc(1927)

NEW POEMS

Biodiversity

Seeing the Hand

Take-off

Fledgling

The Dance

La Fleuraison

South Beach

Manifesto

Nostalgia Sonnet

The Wild Colonial Boys

Au Pays de la Somme

Common Grounds

The View

Genealogy

Soundings

Snow-fire

Biographical Note

‘A fallen flower

returning to the branch?

But no – a butterfly!’

MORITAKE

‘Still, he sees all things connected,

the body to the universe,

the same laws governing all:

what makes the planets dance,

the apple fall.’

NADYA AISENBERG

from

THE EYE’S CIRCLE (1974)

SHAPES WITHIN A PATTERN

I

the eye as voyager      explorer

moulding the split-second      touch

a camera      self-directed      flashed links

a belonging      expectant      the stage

set inside the waiting      wind seen restless

along its voice      eye tracing silences and

the heart’s quickening      the reactor of the present

identifying mechanism      that marshals

set place                              all colour

in a saving pattern

II

eye as shadow        refined under the eye-lid

the closed thought        a prompted tide

shoring the late sunrise        facing bizarre

helmeted waves that foam and shrink

slowed under the heat of distance

locked in a blue sky        keeper of the illusion

eye as final liberator        that sees the death

death in a paid country

drying to dust the spent tongue

the hierarchy unbent

III

remembered the eye that’s face to face        the true witness

with exactness of the moment protracted

jarring the problem        eye the freed interpreter

that takes the climate              the crying fall

without solution              offering nuances unchangeable

and collective found whim

the taking reporter that stays neglected

that fights unuse      feels under surfaces

guards against the mind’s menace

of a jammed despair

IV

eye is the ear to silence      broken in the sea’s channel

curves of sound turning

the thud of a volcano

cracked on its rib of earth

currents echoing      searching within mind’s caves

simultaneous the links

heard in the mystical     escape of sounds

crunch from a forest     feet     the slow disappearing

as ear limits what eye can find

linked in the mind’s charge forever

V

beyond the reckoning of slaves

the tussle with blindness        with scenes imagined

that have a saved reality

the blind man searching his version

how beautiful his lover        her hair

a forest     a tree     the moment that’s

locked away from him      that he

can touch almost but not know complete

that he must take on trust

wondering what light is like

VI

eye is the gatherer-in of lover’s glance

the look of love     understood without words

the climb to freedom        steady lines building

to ultimate bridges

of passion turned to silence

returning depth with memories     expanded to the limits

of earthbound preoccupation     the sudden

welcome of touch and caring

half-forgotten     taken-for-granted accepted

into known canals of distance

VII

held across the eye’s surrender      the

give-and-take of generations

where landscapes look the same

sometimes      light and static dark

sprayed against cracked walls of distance

this the aged’s

from

PASSENGERS TO THE CITY (1985)

SONG FOR AN UNBORN

Child, curled in the night

I call you, know you

feeling your way against the walls.

You are so used to darkness now –

your blind busy limbs

buffet and push, quickening

as you weigh yourself and float.

In the beginning, I ran through hours

trying to feel you real.

Daily I bargained with you,

was cajoled and soothed

by your moves, winning,

always teaching me. And yesterday

you set yourself on X-ray, vividly

thumb in mouth, head down, a plunderer

looping in the sky.

Half-afraid with new happiness

I scanned that picture,

hunting details – your face, body,

you. Suddenly I knew

your eyes were almost ready

to lift the dark.

FIRSTBORN

For years I dreamt you

my lost child, a face unpromised.

I gathered you in, gambling,

making maps over your head.

You were the beginning of a wish

and when I finally held you,

like some mother-cat I looked you over –

my dozy lone-traveller set down at last.

So much for maps,

I tried to etch you in, little stranger

wrapped like a Japanese doll.

You opened your fish-eyes and stared,

slowly your bunched fists

bracing on air.

FOR JULIEN AT SIX WEEKS

Already

you have taken the world

by your fingertips

small hands closing on

grapes of air,

first fruits that you touch

and hold at arm’s length

to choose and choose again.

Soon you will learn

how days are layered with secrets,

how the sun always combs back

its fields of light,

how the wind unveils its colours.

You have all the time you want –

a careful mime

rehearsing routines

as old as the eye.

AT THE PLAYGROUND

The March wind whisks against us:

my son, three, starts the roundabout

refuses to get on himself. Today

he has planned ahead, says it’s his turn

to push me, watches me on board

and I’m away. I enjoy being passenger,

store all this for later –

the afternoon’s lulled moves,

everywhere spring heady

and he in the foreground

racing his years, reminding me

to take care, hang on.

The ground spins, blurs; he begs it

with each command, checks

I’m not going too fast.

‘You can’t fall off,’ he says

smiling, assured.

I know it, this steady pace

contains us both, days overlap: he will perhaps

never love me more than now.

DISTANCES

I see my mother waving – her unfussed

smiling au revoir, alone on her verandah,

a small figure half-covered by shadow.

I hold her wave, see myself sharing it

eightfold, once for each of us – a wave

we have grown into

as she perfected it, voiced it over years

listening for the two who died,

losses she carried into her skin,

her children – the only trophies

she ever wanted.

Now I search her face

contained, real as light,

hear over her words sewn into