Erhalten Sie Zugang zu diesem und mehr als 300000 Büchern ab EUR 5,99 monatlich.
- Herausgeber: Nine Arches Press
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Sprache: Englisch
Space Baby asks difficult questions about the Earth, its beings, and what lies ahead for them; how do we look to the future on a planet that's burning? How do we come to terms with our grief, and what can we believe in? If the human race destroys what we have, where will we go? In this dystopian, searching book, Evans mixes absurdity and wit with speculative, serious themes. Here, artificial intelligence and robots will 'cuddle you to sleep', the melting permafrost will reveal its surprises, and we encoutner the very first human baby born in space. Ultimately, Evans writes to acknowledge our responsibilities and interconnectedness with earth and all its lifeforms, as well as to our future generations. These are vivid, prescient poems of existence, and survival, which ask how we can still find joy on a ruined planet.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 38
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Das E-Book (TTS) können Sie hören im Abo „Legimi Premium” in Legimi-Apps auf:
Ähnliche
Space Baby
Space Baby
Suzannah Evans
ISBN: 978-1-913437-38-1
eISBN: 978-1-913437-39-8
Copyright © Suzannah Evans, 2022.
Cover artwork: ‘Outer Landscape’ © Ayham Jabr
www.instagram.com/ayhamjabr
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.
Suzannah Evans 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 June 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
Space Baby
Timeline of the Far Future
Doomsday Preppers
The Internet of Things
This Robot Will Cuddle You to Sleep
The Long Bets
Be The Change
Rise and Shine
The Burning World
That smile is yours,
Skip to the End
The Atomic Priesthood
Permafrost
Duvet Day
The Dreaming Octopus Colour Chart
The Dead, The Dancers, and the Air
The Moth Count
The Mist on the Top of the Forest
What is it Like to be a Bat?
The Wolf of Gubbio
A Course in Miracles
The Glacier Attends its Own Funeral as a Ghost
The Passenger Pigeon
The Voice of Nature
Lonely Hearts, Endlings
How We Miss Them
Space
The Control Room
The City Addresses its Brand New Moon
Cassini Love Poem
Supermassive Black Hole
The Mountain Climber
Company
Slow Season
In Nova Scotia
Inside each universe is another universe
Notes
Acknowledgements
About the author and this book
‘the grey universe that rolls us
a thousand thousand thousand years’
– Edwin Morgan, ‘Last Message’
‘If the recipients recognize the silhouetted human figure, they may guess that it was both difficult and seemingly pointless to scale the rock needle. The only point would be the accomplishment of doing it. If this message is communicated, it will tell extraterrestrials something very important about us.’
– Jon Lomberg, Pictures of Earth
Space Baby
SPACE BABY! Born on the 61st shuttle
off planet Earth, midwifed
into the unknown. SPACE BABY!
Bungeeing in zero-G on the umbilicus.
SPACE BABY! In silver nappy
on a cockpit chair, fat little hands
on the steering column Look,
she’s driving! SPACE BABY! Her image
broadcast back to Earth by the Space Boss
to show its ailing systems we don’t need you
any more. SPACE BABY! The first to learn
to talk, to sing, to count in space
the first child schooled entirely in space
the first to play spin the bottle and be kissed
by some other space-born teen.
SPACE BABY! The great hope, born
on a starship, citizen of no country
the first step towards homo whatevernext
SPACE BABY! Daydreaming from a porthole
on course to Kepler 542b where our race
won’t land until her great-great grandkids
are a hundred. And once they have settled
her birthday will be a holiday! SPACE BABY!
At the municipal square her face smiles down
cast in some new-discovered alloy
kids loiter and smoke there after curfew
scratch their tags into her moonboots.
Timeline of the Far Future
The moon is pulling further
and further away from the earth
and you still haven’t decided
if you’re going to procreate
surely as the sun will exhaust
its supply of hydrogen
the doctor will ask about plans
for your as-yet voiceless eggs
in 50,000 years
every earth day will be a second longer
the supercontinent of Pangaea Ultima
will re-configure itself
all over the surface of the seas
it took our explorers so long to label
if you choose to have a child
you will pick a name to suit it
see it suffer pain
get it through exams
and decide at what age
it should be allowed a mobile phone
inevitably the Milky Way
and Andromeda
will knit themselves
sparklingly
across the sky
into one single garment
before you know it
your friends with toddlers
will be learning the names of boy bands
it would embarrass you to say aloud
Mercury’s orbit will start to look
like a dropped and spiralling penny
and any astrologers left alive
will link this to wider social injustices
you almost certainly have not
made enough pension contributions
one day your mistakes
could hurt someone
Phobos will collide with Mars
both will fall into the sun and feel nothing.
Doomsday Preppers
We wonder now what we missed
