Small Moon Curve E-Book

Roz Goddard

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

Seitenzahl: 31

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Small Moon Curve by Roz Goddard is an intimate poetry memoir exploring what it means to ease open to the restorative powers of love, faith and beauty following diagnosis and treatment for breast cancer. In this compelling, tender and deeply moving testimony, the narrator discovers a surprising and powerful affinity with Tess of the D'Urbervilles – as spiritual companion and guide through the challenging currents of illness, trauma and transformation. This collection considers the stories we inherit, those we tell ourselves – and power of stories to rescue and renew us in a moment where "the world outside, the coming dawn, can only be reached by crossing a terrible sea". From a Buddhist retreat, to the nighttime depths of a maternity suite and the dark waters of a South Wales reservoir, Goddard's beautiful and sensitive poems study what it means to step into the wild river of ourselves – and feel alive. Here, poetry is way to hold and examine the things we are fearful of, and to find compassion and resolve in order to make peace with our past and live fully in our present.

Leseprobe

Small Moon Curve

Small Moon Curve

Roz Goddard

ISBN: 978-1-913437-94-7

eISBN: 978-1-913437-95-4

Copyright © Roz Goddard, 2024

Cover artwork: ‘Pandora's Surprise’ © Alison Harper.

Reproduced by permission of the artist and the Archives and Special Collections, University of Strathclyde Library.

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.

Roz Goddard 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 July 2024 by:

Nine Arches Press

Unit 14, Sir Frank Whittle Business Centre,

Great Central Way, Rugby.

CV21 3XH

United Kingdom

www.ninearchespress.com

Printed on recycled paper in the United Kingdom by:

Imprint Digital

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

For Ian

Contents

Up late with Tess of The d’Urbervilles

‘Why I danced and laughed only yesterday’

Sentinel

Carrying Tess

morning of the diagnosis

The dog-shaped key

In the Shrine Room

Stones, cold water (i)

Stones, cold water (ii)

In Root and Silt

Small Moon Curve

Scattering

Holding hands with Tess

Fattening field

Retreat (i)

In my hunger

Retreat (ii)

On Clent Hills

The late nineties

Singing with Frank Ifield

The Note

Talking to Mother Reborn in the Heaven of the Thirty-three Gods

Some magic in my blood

All that is Silver and Ancient

My Father’s Bathwater in a Kilner Jar

Three-cornered field

Times of Fury

Crow

The Ways I Carry You

Tenderness

Mr V wears a reindeer tie

Dreaming field

It’s Time

I am soft and fear the hours

Two heartbeats spiking, falling away

Parakeets wake under a pink sky

All Buds in April Swelling

Metta Bhavana for Tree

I want a stranger for Tess

Breast prosthesis as abandoned love

Breast prosthesis as sea creature

Song for Tess

Touch

Sweet peas

Bird app

Goldfish on the Coast

New Year’s Eve Wedding Day

Walking with Ted

Notes and Acknowledgements

About the author and this book

This opening to the life

we have refused

again and again

until now

– David Whyte

Up late with Tess of The d’Urbervilles

The winter I lost a breast,

I stayed awake watching oak

become a delta of dark rivers.

It will pass, this feeling of being

ripped in two. Morning comes

and light fills all the spaces.

I’ve been reading Tess.

She’s driving the wagon

under sharp stars on the road

to Casterbridge, tired from

holding up the sky. It’s the night

her horse is pierced by the mailcart.

Beehives scatter as glowing

lanterns along the drowsy lane.

I want to reach in and have her

lying next to me in the silence –

closing our fists tight, opening

them again, over and over –

until the bright pain

softens to the red tip of dawn.

‘Why I danced and laughed only yesterday’

There’s cancer there

we came out through

hushing doors

heavy in the new world,

carrying my small cluster

curled against winter.

A sunwheel caught

on the car’s bumper.

Christmas lights

shook on the pine.

Early stage –

a cool hand holding mine

in the shadows.

There were loved ones

waiting for news, for my name

to appear bright on a screen

but no mother

to scald a tea pot

murmur into my hair.

Sentinel

To lean into sky, feel its cradle

I walk out under trees half filled.

Danny the greyhound moves slow

carrying the world’s sadness.

Aspen on high ground start up a sly song

‘What are you saying no to?’

The doctor can’t reach me in the woods