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

Friday 3 June 2016

the patience of paper

Because there is far too much to write of – of growing things, of the wildwood, of writing (61,000 words into the new book), of scything and plastering, of intimacy and poetry and the terrible joy of being alive, I'm cheating by offering you this small quote.


'Paper is infinitely patient. Each time you scratch on it, you trace part of yourself, and thus part of the world, and thus part of the grammar of the universe. It is a huge language, but each of us tracks his or her particular understanding of it.'


Burghild Nina Holzer


And because I'm off to lead the next course (Poetry, Place & Pilgrimage in West Cornwall), another 'thin' place, edge place, I offer you this one, too, from the Guardian of June 1; written about the Hebridean island of St Kilda, it applies to any edge place: 'Anywhere you can see the curvature of the earth drives you to think, and I wonder if we imbue peripheral places [...]with such significance because they challenge our mainland mainstream lives – and how hectic, sustainable or important they are...'

Patrick Barkham



 





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