The Art of Falling E-Book

Kim Moore

• Herausgeber: Seren
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 54

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

"The poems of The Art of Falling are fearless. There are more good poems filling Kim Moore's first collection than many poets will produce in a lifetime." – Alison Brackenbury "This accessibility (in topic or theme) is due not to their simplicity but Moore's deftness as a poet. Form and language collaborate to give her work an enviable ease, flooring the reader fast with adroit humour and drama, making the reading experience both nimble and jarring as we move from the lightness of a trumpet lesson to the darkness of endured abuse in a violent relationship. Moore's is an exciting and full first collection." – Laura Tansley "Take a long, deep breath when reaching for Kim Moore's first full collection, The Art of Falling, because you'll be tumbling with her from the first page onwards through her intoxicating verse.' – Matthew Stewart "Kim Moore's The Art of Falling (Seren) was just a joy - a tough, tender book packed with a variety of forms and emotional clout…. This is one of those rare books that I feel I could give to any non-poetry reader with the aim of converting them to poetry's undeniable charms." – Sarah Westcott "I find her approach, her language, her emotion, her intensity and her originality compelling. I try here to outline here a few of the reasons why I think it's particularly impressive. I do so not only because of my own enthusiasm for the book, but because I think it represents the kind of poetry we all should be aiming to write." – Noel Williams Kim Moore, in her lively debut poetry collection, The Art of Falling, sets out her stall in the opening poems, firmly in the North amongst 'My People': "who swear without knowing they are swearing… scaffolders and plasterers and shoemakers and carers…". 'A Psalm for the Scaffolders' is a hymn for her father's profession. The title poem riffs on the many sorts of falling "so close to failing or to falter or to fill". The poet's voice is direct, rhythmic, compelling. These are poems that confront the reader, steeped in realism, they are not designed to soothe or beguile. They are not designed with careful overlays of irony and although frequently clever, they are not pretentious but vigorously alive and often quite funny. In the first section there is: a visit to a Hartley street spiritualist, a train trip from Barrow to Sheffield, a Tuesday at Wetherspoons. The author's experience as a peripatetic brass teacher sparks several poems. The lives of others also feature throughout, including a quietly devastating central sequence, 'How I Abandoned My Body To His Keeping': is the story of a woman embroiled in a relationship marked by coercion and violence. These are close-to-the-bone pieces, harrowing and exact. The final section includes beautifully imagined character portraits of John Lennon and Wallace Hartley (the violinist on the Titanic), as well as Jazz trumpeter Chet Baker and the poet Shelley and other poems on: suffragettes, a tattoo inspired by Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, and a poetic letter addressed to a 'Dear Mr Gove'.

Leseprobe

The Art of Falling

for Chris

The Art of Falling

Kim Moore

Seren is the book imprint of Poetry Wales Press Ltd. 57 Nolton Street, Bridgend, Wales, CF31 3AEwww.serenbooks.comfacebook.com/SerenBookstwitter@SerenBooks

The right of Kim Moore to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

© Kim Moore 2015

ISBN: 978-1-78172-237-4 e-book: 978-1-78172-239-8 Kindle: 978-1-78172-238-1

A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

The publisher acknowledges the financial assistance of the Welsh Books Council.

Book Cover Painting by Nicholas Stedman.

Printed in Bembo by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow

Author blog: https://kimmoorepoet.wordpress.com/blog/

Contents

I

And the Soul

My People

Boxer

A Psalm for the Scaffolders

Teaching the Trumpet

The Trumpet Teacher’s Curse

The Messiah, St Bees Priory

Hartley Street Spiritualist Church

Tuesday at Wetherspoons

In Praise of Arguing

Barrow to Sheffield

Sometimes You Think of Bowness

I’m Thinking of My Father

After Work

That Summer

All My Thoughts

The Art of Falling

II

How I Abandoned My Body To His Keeping

In That Year

Body, Remember

He was the Forgotten Thing

When I Was a Thing with Feathers

Followed

The Knowing

The Language of Insects

When Someone is Singing

Your Hands

On Eyes

Your Name

Encounter

I Know

Translation

The World’s Smallest Man

How I Abandoned My Body To His Keeping

Human

III

Red Man’s Way

If We Could Speak Like Wolves

Candles

Picnic on Stickle Pike

The Fall

The Dead Tree

How Wolves Change Rivers

Some People

How the Stones Fell

A Room of One’s Own

The Master Engraver

Suffragette

John Lennon

Shelley

Wallace Hartley

Chet Baker

Dear Mr Gove

In Another Life

Give Me a Childhood

New Year’s Eve

Notes and Acknowledgements

I

And the Soul

And the soul, if she is to know herself, must look into the soul...

– Plato

And the soul, if she is to know herself must look into the soul and find what kind of beast is hiding.

And if it be a horse, open up the gate and let it run. And if it be a rabbit give it sand dunes to disappear in.

And if it be a swan, create a mirror image, give it water. And if it be a badger grow a sloping woodland in your heart.

And if it be a tick, let the blood flow until it’s sated. And if it be a fish there must be a river and a mountain.

And if it be a cat, find some people to ignore, but if it be a wolf, you’ll know from its restless way

of moving, if it be a wolf, throw back your head and let it howl.

My People

I come from people who swear without realising they’re swearing. I come from scaffolders and plasterers and shoemakers and carers, the type of carers paid pence per minute to visit an old lady’s house. Some of my people have been inside a prison. Sometimes I tilt towards them and see myself reflected back. If they were from Yorkshire, which they’re not, but if they were, they would have been the ones on the pickets shouting scab and throwing bricks at policemen. I come from a line of women who get married twice. I come from a line of women who bring up children and men who go to work. If I knew who my people were, in the time before women were allowed to work, they were probably the women who were working anyway. If I knew who my people were before women got the vote, they would not have cared about the vote. There are many arguments among my people. Nobody likes everybody. In the time of slavery my people would have had them if they were the type of people who could afford them, which they probably weren’t. In the time of casual racism, some of my people would and will join in. Some of my people know everybody who lives on their street.They are the type of people who will argue with the teacher if their child has detention. The women of my people are wolves and we talk to the moon in our sleep.

Boxer

If I could make it happen backwards so you could start again I would, beginning with you on the floor, the doctor in slow motion reversing from the ring, the screams of the crowd pulled back in their throats, your coach, arms outstretched, retreats to the corner as men get down from chairs and tables, and you rise again, so tall, standing in that stillness in the seconds before you fell, and the other girl, the fighter, watch her arm move around and away from your jaw, and your mother rises from her knees, her hands still shaking, as the second round unravels itself and instead of moving forward, as your little Irish coach told you to, you move away, back into the corner, where he takes your mouth guard out as gently as if you were his own. The water flies like magic from your mouth and back into the bottle and the first round is in reverse, your punches unrolling to the start of the fight, when the sound of the bell this time will stop you dancing as you meet in the middle, where you come and touch gloves and whisper good luck and you dance to your corners again, your eyes fixed on each other as the song you chose to walk into sings itself back to its opening chords and your coach unwraps your head from the headguard, unfastens your gloves, and you’re out of the ring, with your groin guard, your breast protector, you’re striding round that room full of men, a warrior even before you went in.

A Psalm for the Scaffolders

who balanced like tightrope walkers, who could run up the bracing faster than you or I could climb a ladder, who wore red shorts and worked bare-chested, who cut their safety vests in half, a psalm for the scaffolders and their vans, their steel toe-capped boots, their coffee mugs, a psalm for those who learnt to put up a scaffold standing on just one board, a psalm for the scaffolder who could put a six-inch nail in a piece of wood