The Emma Press Anthology of Age E-Book

• Herausgeber: The Emma Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Serie: The Emma Press Poetry Anthologies
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 45

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

We're all ageing, all of the time. As a society we're getting even older, but we seldom seem to stop and think about the huge mental and physical changes that happen to us as we get old, or what it's like to live as an old person. The Emma Press Anthology of Age is a collection of poems which challenge, celebrate and give age a voice, finding humour amidst the heartbreak and comfort within the pain.

Leseprobe

The Emma Press Anthology of Age

Poems about Ageing

Edited by Sarah Hesketh

With poems from Sophie F Baker, Aileen Ballantyne, Clare Best, Julia Bird, Sharon Black, Alison Brackenbury, Jo Brandon, Gavin Bryce, Jane Burn, Oliver Comins, Nathan Curnow, Isobel Dixon, Hugh Dunkerley, Robert Hamberger, Rachel Heimowitz, Hilaire, Lynn Hoffman, Holly Hopkins, Sandra Horn, Emma-Jane Hughes, Russell Jones, Melinda Kallasmae, Anja Konig, Joan Lennon, Harry Man, Amy McCauley, Bridget McKenzie, Rob Miles, Cheryl Moskowitz, Jed Myers, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Susan Taylor and Edward Venning.

Illustrated by Emma Wright.

The Emma Press

Copyright

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by the Emma Press Ltd

Poems copyright © individual copyright holders 2015

Selection and introduction copyright © Sarah Hesketh 2015

Illustrations copyright © Emma Wright 2015

All rights reserved.

The right of Sarah Hesketh to be identified as the editor of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Print ISBN978-1-910139-31-8

e-ISBN 978-1-910139-25-7

A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.

theemmapress.com

[email protected]

Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright

Introduction by Sarah Hesketh

Nel Mezzo, by Anja Konig

Holding a Stranger’s Hand, by Doireann Ní Ghríofa

Long After Dad Was Grey, by Melinda Kallasmae

I’ve heard of age : how it gobbles the time, by Amy McCauley

Outside the Pub, Hurricane Bawbag, by Russell Jones

The Concert, by Sharon Black

Remembrance, by Russell Jones

Epigenesis, by Edward Venning

Saying My Name, by Robert Hamberger

Kennings, by Bridget McKenzie

The Storm, by Hugh Dunkerley

Last Rites, by Rachel Heimowitz

Knowing the Prognosis, by Clare Best

In the Wars, by Isobel Dixon

Tipping Point, by Holly Hopkins

All Change, by Susan Taylor

Lethe and the Nightingale, by Julia Bird

My Camel, by Emma-Jane Hughes

Hands, by Robert Hamberger

Wood I Gather, by Jed Myers

A Woman Counts Alone in Flat 33, by Sophie F Baker

Waltz, by Hugh Dunkerley

Christmas Lunch at the Nursing Home, by Hilaire

Watching, by Jane Burn

8 a.m., by Alison Brackenbury

Raised Beds, by Rob Miles

Bride, by Gavin Bryce

Survivor, by Isobel Dixon

In the Garden, by Aileen Ballantyne

Soon, by Harry Man

First It’s Just a Couple of Bricks, by Anja Konig

Last Lights, by Lynn Hoffman

Swan Song, by Oliver Comins

Drought, by Cheryl Moskowitz

Dead Penguins, by Nathan Curnow

On the Ferry, by Sandra Horn

To Dust, by Jo Brandon

Later, by Joan Lennon

Acknowledgements, about the editor and illustrator and about the poets

About the Emma Press

Introduction

We’re all ageing, all of the time. You’re doing it right now. Ageing might be said to be the only truly universal experience, and yet most of us live out our lives in denial of it really happening. We privilege the experiences of youth, its appearances and its values, whilst age remains something of a quiet taboo.

In poetry, ageing has proved a difficult topic to tackle without resorting to extremes. Larkin looms large, his Old Fools dribbling and ‘crouching below/Extinction’s alp’. At the other end there’s Dylan Thomas, urging us to rage at the horrid injustice of age. Or Jenny Joseph’s rallying cry for absolute freedom from care or judgement in ‘Warning’. The truth, as ever, is a lot more prosaic: ageing can be fun, and it also can be awful. Experience can bring a kind of freedom, but new responsibilities can emerge at this time of life, both for us and the people around us. More often than not, it’s a mixture of all these things, and being truthful about that difficult mix can make ageing all the easier to enjoy, to endure, to experience.

It was this complex, messy, multi-faceted view of age that I wanted to try and explore when I first pitched the idea of this anthology to Emma Wright. I had a feeling that there would be a strong interest in the subject, that perhaps there weren’t so many outlets for writing about a topic which affects so many of us, in so many different ways. But I don’t think either Emma or I had anticipated the volume of submissions that we would receive, nor how oddly wonderful it would be to see so many people wanting to articulate the same worries and the same experiences. Reading the submitted poems, I felt wrapped in an immense outpouring of solidarity and shared feeling about ageing.

I think this shared sense of ‘It’s ok – me too’ is about as close as I can get to a mission statement for this book. Many of the poems we read showed the speaker trying to deal with the ageing of a loved one. We could have published a whole anthology of poems simply about dementia and care homes, but I think the poems we have here, such as Sharon Black’s ‘The Concert’ and Hilaire’s ‘Christmas Lunch at the Nursing Home’ illuminate this kind of experience with real detail and honesty. Memory loss and the subsequent breakdowns in communication that can happen also appeared again and again. Perhaps it’s not surprising to find that poets are particularly concerned with how our relationship with language can change as we get older. Bridget McKenzie’s ‘Kennings’ and Julia Bird’s dizzying, fragmented rearrangement of Keats’ ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ both explore how language can become something physical, something to be worked and moulded anew.