More Sky E-Book

Joe Carrick-Varty

• Herausgeber: Carcanet Poetry
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2023 A The Irish Times Book of the Year More Sky is a remarkable and remarkably various debut collection from Eric Gregory Award winner, Joe Carrick-Varty, tracking the ways in which experience of addiction and domestic violence shape a life. Carrick-Varty approaches difficult material with great skill and poise: here we find stunning individual lyrics, with an eye for the vivid and surreal; surprising sequences which use Buddhism and Greek myth and the life of coral to refract the poems' interests; and the astonishing sixty-three page long poem 'sky doc' which meditates on suicide, and its retrospective haunting of every corner of its speaker's life.

Leseprobe

Contents

Title PageDedicationAnd God saidSambas for ChristmasDear PostieWhen he waits at the bar my father’s brain is miles above his pintWithdrawalFive days sober and glowingThe ChildrenThe MinotaurSuicide is not your dad and your favourite rapper going for coffeePerhaps Here Both Our Guiltlessness Becomes ClearestA week and not a word since the argumentIf you chained yourselfAll my fathers are hunting dodos in the parkThe Father HeavensWhat if suicide is just taking off your headphonesThe brickSomewhere FarMore SkyLop NurMoonless JuneWhen you lean close and tell meParks54 Questions for the Man Who Sold a Shotgun to My FatherPanasonic RF-P50DEG-SDraw a circle around the city you grew up inYou are always the last to know thingsFrom the Perspective of CoralSome Dads/ dream in which /In AmberThe SecretSupercalifragilisticexpialidociousMy father is sitting on the other side of the french doorsLamechOde to ShotgunThere’s a Person Reflected on the TV Calling Their DadSometimes I Talk to Myself as if I’m on a Chat Showsky docNotesAcknowledgementsAbout the AuthorAlso by Joe Carrick-VartyCopyright

for the stayers

And God said

Every time a horse lies down in a sunlit field

an island goes up off the coast of Alaska or Peru

or in the middle of a lake south of Stockholm.

Every time a whale is born albino

a man doesn’t die of liver failure and every time

it rains at sea a child speaks first words.

Every time you watch the football

in your alcoholic father’s flat

on his little settee that unfolds into a bed

in case you ever wanted to stay

a forest disappears and a doorbell rings.

Every time the ref blows the whistle

and your father boils the kettle and somewhere

islands are going up and oil rigs just watching.

Sambas for Christmas

In a corner of some far-flung town

on some moon of some planet

at the edge of some pocketed galaxy

the soles of my father’s new trainers

are landing on tarmac, squeaking

as they take off again, box-fresh

at the end of his faded black jeans.

They will squeak for a week or so

and then he will die on his back

in his sleep like Jimi Hendrix

after a night at a pub that’s not quite my local

whistling as he stumbles home

running his fingers through a rosemary bush

awash in the chippy’s neon blue.

Believe, for a minute, that I am not a son

who buys trainers for his father

but a molecule of gas inside a star

whose light still touches a city

that’s not quite Oxford where a father

who’s not quite mine tries on pairs

of Adidas, Nike, struggling with the laces,

the incomprehensible bow.

Dear Postie

If no answer please leave parcel behind rhododendron—

if storm hits and rhododendron blows away

please leave parcel inside wheelie bin with brick on top—

if crying baby can be heard on approach

tap three times on bottom-left panel of shed window—

DO NOT ring doorbell—if rainbow windmill

spins slower than usual open phone and call alcoholic father—

if rainbow windmill stops spinning at any moment

come back in month with picture of alcoholic father

eating fish and chips in park—if phone rings out

wait for nesting swallows to return from Africa

then call again—DO NOT mention alcoholic father

to friends colleagues woman you love—DO NOT

kiss woman you love—DO NOT eat sleep

shit watch TV until alcoholic father is spotted

leaving Tesco with Guinness and Hula Hoops—

DO NOT I repeat DO NOT drive to 24-hour Shell garage

spend following afternoon outside alcoholic father’s flat

old ladies watching—bay windows blue with Countdown

When he waits at the bar my father’s brain is miles above his pint

like the swimming pool

I watch six cranes

lower onto the roof

of a skyscraper as

my father gets drunk

with a man called Gary

the kind of drunk

you can peer into

their earrings glinting

their hearts a pair of

tiny red whales

I watch the builders

fit three whole floors

with windows

one guy comes out

carrying a fox

dangles it Michael Jackson-

style over the lip

of a balcony my father

cannot remember

the name of the film

the score of the game

sometimes I drink

and lie and tell strangers

in pub gardens

that my father

is being built that

he’s coming back

from the ground

that I’ll pull a fox

out of his body one day

carry it in my arms

blinking and pissing

to a sunlit table

just like this one

Withdrawal

Unpack tins of soup—open windows—

scrape grease from the hob—

sync your breathing with his—walk

with purpose between the bathroom

and the light-filled kitchen—

find a moth and let it live—postcards

in a drawer—pictures of a holiday—on the carpet

build a house out of tins—a family—

trees dotted around a pond—

a swallow’s nest like the backdoor of a star—

a note on the table you’ll soon cycle away from

your fingers like prunes and smelling of bleach

Five days sober and glowing

the dad sips a lime soda in the same chair at the same table by the same window at the same distance from the same screen in the same view of the same bar in the same pub on the same street with the same school by the same river on the same bus route in the same city with the same Christmas in the same country on the same island in the same hemisphere in the same trainers with the same son

THE CHILDREN

on the muted screen a ball lands

one side of a line

and this means that a person has won

the camera jiggles

zooms out refocuses on a crowd

who are cheering

which means that a person has won

yes clapping

back smacking drink dropping

all signifiers

that yep a ball has landed

one side of a line

one side not one side but ONE

SIDE of course right

because a person has won

a ball has landed

people are happy and although this is not

a metaphor for grief

I cannot deny that a ball not a ball but

THE BALL

has landed is landing will land

until it stops being

THE BALL and starts being a ball

at the edge of

a roofless room lots of people are

jumping around in-

side of lots of sound lots of screens

lots of open sky and

did I mention my dad has taken a

shotgun to a field

and I haven’t realised because I am