Glut E-Book

Ramona Herdman

• Herausgeber: Nine Arches Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 42

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Ramona Herdman's Glut is a lush, entertaining, and bittersweet collection of poems about how we live together and find meaning through rules and rituals around food, family, alcohol, work, nature, sex and love. These vividly-realised, nimble poems probe at the delicate balancing acts we – our bodies and our minds – perform in life: between power and trust, between convention and rebellion, and between what is enough and what is too much. All the time, Herdman's spry poetry keeps a gimlet eye on our impulse to make sense of it all – of how we live and work together, and what strategies will help us to navigate our way through the tangled undergrowth of negotiation and misunderstanding. Glut is a lustrous, darkly funny, open-hearted book on the distance between people, on satisfying appetites, and on seeking both pleasure and consolation.

Leseprobe

Glut

Glut

Ramona Herdman

ISBN: 978-1-913437-46-6

eISBN: 978-1-913437-47-3

Copyright: © Ramona Herdman, 2022.

Cover artwork: © Jacky Howson, 2022.

www.instagram.com/jackyhowsonartist

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Ramona Herdman has asserted her right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

First published August 2022 by:

Nine Arches Press

Unit 14, Sir Frank Whittle Business Centre,

Great Central Way, Rugby.

CV21 3XH

United Kingdom

www.ninearchespress.com

Printed in the United Kingdom by: Imprint Digital

Nine Arches Press is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

Contents

The centre of the fucking universe

I have to let my lover in under my shield arm

Valentine, 13 years in

First drink of the night

Sunstroke

Jill had two ponies

Blackberrying

The car after the car

The one-day plan

I’ve not yet met a bear but do believe

My latest tactic is trust

Two cats on a Valentine’s card

Cuckoo and egg

Congratulations

Just a small slice?

Labyrinth love list poem

Have you ever said I love you without meaning it?

Precipitation

dear life

Low pain threshold

Creating a culture where We Can Bring Our Whole Selves to Work

M&S lets me know twice

It’s not me taking the minutes

Sick note

Comeuppance

A line of washing

The beekeeper

It won’t be a normal year

Mapping the apples

This is what happens after you die

Subsistence

Hooked

‘Wake up: time to die’

TRIFLE

Self-portrait as cheese board

‘My name is Legion: for we are many’

Come the zombie apocalypse

‘Flown with insolence and wine’

Drinking partner

Ship in a bottle

Mes braves

One of the ways I could fall off the wagon is bacon

Shame

Ever After House

He sits slightly too close and we don’t look at each other

Every time I hear of a swan

Stoat

Ferns

Salad spinner

Two death in the afternoons, please

Small life with cooling rack

Night heart

Acknowledgements and Thanks

About the author and this book

The centre of the fucking universe

I wonder what happened to Martin?

When we were young he gave me

a sea-smoothed stone, as if I loved him,

as if I’d treasure it in my palm.

He was only my friend’s fiancé.

Long gone, long gone, back to New Zealand.

The dark, the other side of the world.

He could even be dead now. I wonder

how many acquaintances he gave

such presumptuous gifts to?

Is there a beach-trail of stones

across the world on the desks

of women who half-remember

his conversation of pronouncements?

Of course, you know don’t you

this is all about me, like everything?

The stone rests on my papers –

little igneous owl-pellet,

blip from the world’s core.

All this barely a blink in its lifetime

of never loving anyone.

I have to let my lover in under my shield arm

I try to stay in, out of the plague.

But there’s something essential he needs

from the shops every day. I wait in the car

outside the Co-op. Loiter opposite,

not breathing. I hand him sanitiser

as soon as he’s back. I have to trust him.

Home, I sing the wash your hands song.

Unpack his choices. My favourite biscuits.

I tell him I’ll kill him if he kills me.

Valentine, 13 years in

Love, I want you clothed.

I want you to yawn and stretch

so I glimpse the reach

of skin at the base of your back

under rucked fabric.

That place I feel the muscles react

when we hug. Like the sway

in the trunk of a tree

when the wind moves its branches.

Then I want you turned away

so I can slip my hands round

from behind, under your T-shirt

and cradle your belly

warm in its burrow.

So I can put my face blind

against the oak door of your back.

So anyone but me

might not be sure it’s you.

First drink of the night

Reliable magic. Undimmed spring.

Peter Pan at the window, laughing,

reaching his hand in, lifting you

light on the empty air, the horizon

opening up like the sea arriving.

Sunstroke

You’d’ve thought I’d’ve learnt better by now,

but no. I’m still lizard-bask as anyone,

come the year’s new sun.

Despite that student afternoon, lasered

by light in the concrete campus square, supping one pint

then fevered and chucking up all night.

Despite that, and despite the white flag of my face,

my freckle-scarred arms that in latter

years haven’t faded back in winter, I know no better.

I ought, I ought, to be born-again virgin white.

Swathed. Slathered. Tented. I’m not.

Alongside hermeneutics, you’d think I’d’ve learnt

my skin’s limits, my poorly head’s needs. Nope.

I’ve heatstroked often since – once even indoors,

in a sauna.

O the faints, the piteous retchlings,