from BARDO

The stars are in our belly; the Milky Way our umbilicus.

Is it a consolation that the stuff of which we’re made

is star-stuff too?


– That wherever you go you can never fully disappear –

dispersal only: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen.


Tree, rain, coal, glow-worm, horse, gnat, rock.


Roselle Angwin

Wednesday 4 March 2015

shades of yellow

Tis the beginning of the yellow season. The primroses have been out for a while, the celandines have just started starring the banks and verges, the dandelions are opening their little fists of faces, and now the wild daffs are in flower:



The banks of the Teign at Fingle Bridge with be thick as Devon clotted cream with them.

And the image for the new cover of the second edition, ten years on, of my first poetry collection, Looking For Icarus, has been chosen. (Thank you, Gay Anderson, participant on last year's 'Writing the Bright Moment' retreat week in France.) This will appear from Indigo Dreams in June.



I still think this collection, published by bluechrome in 2005, includes some of my best work. (It isn't always the case; quite often previously-published work can be cringe-making when you reread it, and I'm still tinkering with poems published in my 20s.)

This collection opens with a long sequence of short prose poems, 'West'. Here are the opening and the closing ones for you.

~~~
Collytown
Cutting a blade of grass and shaking the universe: the implicate order. The whole tree being the forest. One child being all people. One breath breathing all the winds of the universe. Weeks of rain; I’m stumbling down the track, and somewhere – the other side of the world – my footstep sets a tumble of dust trickling. There you are, out there somewhere, and I don’t see you, can’t touch you, but turning might catch a sudden scent of you on the breeze, the tremor of you flickering through these thistles and dry grasses.

Elsewhere
In another place which we’ve not visited there’s a coffee cup and saucer in sunflower yellow. The cup is upturned and our separate moments have temporarily fused. The tides of us flow together. We walk barefoot through the lemon grove, lick honey from each other’s fingers, celebrate the sunshine, the moment. All there is.




~~~




© Roselle Angwin 2005/2015






 

4 comments:

  1. Feeling connected, a separate part of a whole system, but at one with it all. What I long for, strive for, and yet, find so difficult to actually experience – being unsure of what it is exactly I'm striving for. Striving is not my favourite word: too close to forcing perhaps? Anyway, these lovely gems of yours help to create the sense of being connected as I sit up here in my WR tinged with the pale and misted gold of today –which reminds me of the hazy effect of something breathing over it.
    Shall buy your collection when it's out.

    Something else prompted by the last blog's discussion: have you seen Robert Macfarlane's fascinating article in last Sat Guardian about the language of landscape? Thought of you immediately.
    Miriam x

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  2. Miriam, that sounds perfect - connected, separate part of whole system, breathing with it all.

    Thank you re RM's article - yes, read it, and shall be buying that book when it's available at a cost I can afford! Gary Snyder writes a little about this in his 'Practice of the Wild' essays, too. Exciting!

    Thank you too re saying you'll buy the collection.

    Rx

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  3. Hello Roselle. Here the yellow is blossoming too and soon the banks will be burgeoning with it's cheerful spread. Something so generous in that; each small flower singing her part in the great chorus of things, yet whole and of herself. And what a ravishing cover to your book, a good choice! Very much looking forward to reading the rest of the poems - an enticing and lovely trailer above.
    Wishing you joyful participation in the season as she turns, and thank you again for all your reflective and gracefilled posts, they are deeply appreciated. Cx

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  4. C, thank you - as always - for your beautiful lyrical offering, and your generosity. From me to you, love. Rx

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