Four Suites E-Book

Seán Gaffney

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 45

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Seán Gaffney's interests in people, places and their art and music is evident in the four mini suites of this collection of poems. The Caucasus Suite explores that mountain range, its shifting borders and boundaries -- all seen through the photographs of a female Russian photographer half Gaffney's age with the mountains holding metaphors for the complex relationship between the two. Then comes Caravaggio with the spiritual resonances evoked by some of the religious themes he painted. This is followed by the world we live in and its and our challenges. Finally, the author considers the art and craft of his own writing. This is Seán Gaffney's fourth collection after Las Meninas, Family Matters and Aspects of Ageing.

Leseprobe

CONTENT

Introduction

THE CAUCASUS SUITE

Foreword by Irene Grönwall

Preface

Metaphors

A Metaphor awaiting meaning – in itself a metaphor?

Themes

The Caucasus

Borderlands

Adishi glacier

Boundaries

Shkhelda

Shouting at God

Clouds

Foothills

Almost there

Flatlands

Svaneti plains

Svaneti song

Ushba revisited

TRIBUTE TO CARAVAGGIO

Reminiscenses

Matthew

The Taking of Christ

Emmaus

Mary dead August 15, 2020

OUR WORLD

A Gestalt practitioner-theorist reflects on recent dynamics of our co-created field

The Pilgrim Reaper

Life on Earth

MY ART AND CRAFT

My Sound of Music

The Fertile void

Setting off

Meeting my travelling companions

T Shirts

Almost there

Arriving

The state I’m in

Introduction

These four mini suites share a common theme, implicit in the first three and made explicit in the fourth: the tension between art and craft. This tension is applied to my meeting through photographs with a distant mountain range and all it evokes in me, including my relationship to and with the photographer; my meetings with a Baroque Italian painter and his work; my being in the world and the world in which I find myself and, finally an exploration of how a piece of handicraft be it a painting, sculpture, piece of music, the written word can be transformed into art when it enters a dialogue with a viewer, listener or in this case you the reader. I regard you as my collaborator in a joint artistic endeavour and suggest that you read my work with a pencil (and eraser) to hand and feel free enough to share your versions with me.

Seán Gaffney

Stockholm, December 2020

[email protected]

The Caucasus Suite

Foreword to The Caucasus Suite

This is a love story, of sorts, between Caucasian mountain peaks in Georgia. This is also a love story, of a special kind, between an Irish ageing poet and a younger Russian photographer.

The photographer capturing the beauty of the mountains with her camera, the poet with his words. His soul.

The metaphor is at the heart of this poem and in the hearts of these two people as they explore the borders and boundaries of their relationship. Hard borders they both know well enough from their past, their origin – softer boundaries they examine, discard, and sometimes agree upon, accept.

Their lives, their moments of meeting, are beautifully depicted by the poet, by Seán. The language filled with love, beauty and vulnerability. Between the words, underneath the lines, in the rhythm and through the theme – almost tangible.

These two protagonists lean over their cultural fences, the distance between their countries, they reach out through boundaries and they connect. Trying to create a common ground, a common understanding of their separate lives, their Christian faith and future.

They are touched by life.

The story of the powerful mountains set the background for these creative souls, exploring the dividing lines of life – and one of them I know well. Sean, the poet, the teacher – my friend.

What does it mean to really love somebody, to really care? What does it take to really see somebody else? And is it ever too late?

Irene Grönwall 2020

Photographs by Elizabeth Joudro

Preface

Pieces in free verse of an emerging jigsaw puzzle of itself on the past, present and foreshortened future of a favourite theme – foreshortened by my age and deteriorating health and the context of Covid 19, where I am in the main risk-group.

Dedicated with affection and gratitude to Liza Joudro who represents the framework of the four corner-pieces of the puzzle, as well as the centre piece from and around which the puzzle is emerging and who makes an occasional personal appearance.

Seán Gaffney 2020

(1) Metaphors

A metaphor explored through metaphors a

Challenge surely and why not what

Other method would be credible or

Valid even so here goes it

All began in Belfast and my

Amusement in an airport taxi at the road sign pointing to

The North which

Me being Irish was where I presumed we already were so yes

That border and those

Chuckle brothers’ doggedly negotiated boundary where they could

Meet could

Work could

Plan a shared present even

Future maybe and my own

Experience up there of how our clearly acknowledged borders allowed our

Shared boundaries to emerge from

Hesitation to handshakes and even

Meetings of minds with respected reservations or as Juliet Turner puts it

”Always ready to run” though in collision also if required and so returned my

Ponderings on this theme…

(2) A metaphor awaiting meaning – in itself a metaphor?

Okay so let’s face it me I mean this is to and about you and okay you and me our

Borders and boundaries my favourite theme you got dragged into maybe though

Free soul and body that you are fenced in by anyway a freedom even you kinda sorta

Could relax into and let your camera and Facebook do the talking as you wander in

Anyway chosen landscapes far from your Moscow family home lit at times I’m sure by

Tel Aviv’s Mediterranean sun and light and memories as well of the racoon in the zoo