Shrines of Upper Austria E-Book

Phoebe Power

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

Seitenzahl: 38

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Longlisted for the 2019 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. Shortlisted for the 2019 Seamus Heaney First Collection Prize. Shortlisted for the 2019 Somerset Maugham Award from the Society of Authors. Shortlisted for the 2018 T. S. Eliot Prize. Winner of the 2018 Forward (Felix Dennis) Prize for Best First Collection A Poetry Book Society Spring 2018 Recommendation Wandering in central Europe, a traveller observes and records a landscape of lakes, folk culture and uneasy histories. Phoebe Power's Shrines of Upper Austria gathers numerous stories and perspectives, such as the fragmented narrative of an Austrian woman who married a British soldier after the Second World War, and the voices of schoolchildren and immigrants. Strange discoveries are made: a grave for two dead goats; a lantern procession on the night of Epiphany; a baby abandoned by a river; a homemade frog-puppet. The poems are a collage of stories and histories, set in a variety of forms and registers. They are attentive to local detail, rich in the names of people and places - Marija, Omegepta, Eck 4 and the Loser Mountain. Mixing poetry and prose, image and narrative, German and English, Power's poems are a celebration of creativity in unlikely places. Against a disquieting backdrop of mild winters and memories of snow, they invite us to question what it means to feel at once a stranger and at home.

Leseprobe

for my family

Contents

Title PageDedication  sex and love with the soon-to-be accountantwhat young india wantsRinaThe Moving Swanchildren  * Epiphany NightAustrian Murder CaseIce Rinkfrom A Tour of Shrines of Upper AustriafaschingInstallation for a New BabyGoat Grave8th MayIsis and MarijaGeorgianaProduction Line of a Small Gift for the LadiesPuppet-Maker  * NameEs war einmalnow I’m a bit madVillachI wish she’d never told meSchloss Cumberlandthere was this fellow1943–5 Ebenseeyou don’t know what’s trueIn and Out of EuropeI’m not coming to a country  * notes on climate changesilver white winters that melt into springsEisblumenthe weather’s changingthen you boil the milkMilklovely sausagesBritishsome people have teaAustrian pastoralssomewhere  GlossaryCopyright

Shrines of Upper Austria

sex and love with the soon-to-be accountant

REFLECTIONS: TO RELY ON IN HIS NEW JOB

sets of suits and clear

surfaces, pairs of socks in black

and black, vehicular ease, swivel

chairs, wrapped

sandwiches and selfies secure

and hairless, you may be sure of it,

card’s slide out,

regular payment, her legs on screens

duplicated

you look good in black and white

WEAPONS: WITH WHICH SHE THREATENS HIM

her tongue, kissing him all over,

hands on his lovely long hands, his own

beautiful hands hurt him, her purple-coloured

self that goes and grows

with this mirrored body

I just find you attractive

get the payment, slide the card in,

black lingerie and – depend on it –

bronzer, no hair, wrapped

sandwich, swivel chair, socks,

suit, surface. She’s gone.

No picture to play;

wiped memory.

what young india wants

money: the unauthorised

biography, mad money

adventure, how you can learn

from apple and make money.

the seven secrets

of leadership, how google works, think

big: be positive and brave

to achieve your dreams

                                    <ask not

for money, but for lakshmi>

Rina

She used to faint, her hair

            flapping beside her, eyes

spinning back through her head.

      She grew an eating disorder like

a germ in a test tube, or a baby.

            Never said what was in her

soul, but left her pink lips

      prissed forward at us, to guard her.

Then she got thinner, till she was a slick

            question mark in a long dress.

At every stage, the pattern in her face

                                                faded more.

I saw her on the arm

            of a train operator. He was all

apologies and watches. Eventually

            she drew up a chair at the office herself

and went to work. She never missed a day.

                                                Then a shadow

drew down behind her eye.

She woke one Monday, and could not see

                               through both her eyes.

They said

            a shadow has drawn down

behind this eye.

                       I saw her the next week at a party.

She didn’t mention it.

           Her eyes were just as big,

                        and bare, and blue as I remembered.

The Moving Swan

      There were candles at the bottom of the

      cathedral. They floated in a round pool,

      on a trestle made of thin legs of iron. The

      candle flames were soft and mobile, made

      from water. They moved around the trestletop

      in a circular motion.

      She held the drops of motion in her eye.

      They were the only live thing in the cathedral.

      The candles told her:

INTERLUDE: A DREAM

About a year after this happened I dreamed I was on a set of flying swings, the kind you get on carousels at fairs. Only these swings were high up on a mountainside, and you had to have a ticket, and it was thronging. We pushed forward with our strips of tickets and grabbed a swing before they rose up and away. A strong fairground guy was there to help people onto the swings. I had one next to Joanna. We were lifted into air, with nothing above below or to the right or left of us.

We spun down and saw the green and cream landscape and rivers turn beneath us. We talked about Mike. I asked Joanna if she thought he thought I was too serious. Seriousness can be a great asset, she said.