Last time I shared two poems from my free-to-download poetry chapbooks, but in this post I wanted to share something from my poetry collection Waking up to Thrutopia.
But let’s start with the image above. This erasure collage from the Summer Book Project received the most likes of all the ones I posted on my Instagram page. It’s my second favourite from the series. (I posted my personal favourite last time.) It took what seems to me like a long time to make, because I’m impatient and I have a type of ADHD. So it was gratifying to see people’s reactions.
I have a lot of trouble finishing projects I started. I’m overflowing with ideas and inspiration, but only a fraction of those ideas are channelled into projects. Most of these projects then get abandoned very quickly. So I’m quite pleased with my book that I published last year.
I chose my favourite and strongest poems from the last five years that also resonated best with the theme of my book. And I wrote several new poems and a few essays to further develop the theme. Thrutopia is about trying to get a better place both physically and metaphorically. In three “chapters” I trace my journey from coming to terms with a chronic illness and its possible causes to relating my struggle to the wider context of a world in decline. The focus moves to hope and the search for solutions.
It’s also in this context that I’ve started to write more mindful poems. But more on that in a while!
Here is my favourite poem, a sestina, from Waking up to Thrutopia.
Deep time heals all wounds says the yew tree
Deep inside my aril, I heard a voice
calling to me, speaking of evergreen.
The bright red flesh around me tore; I moved
toward the light becoming a toxin,
pushed up through the dark earth, when a spiral
of light reached out like a prophecy.
I had heard about these prophecies;
when I was still sleeping, always this voice.
I grew my dark-green leaves in a spiral
arrangement on their stems. They are evergreen
and have inside a powerful toxin.
My limbs reached for the sun but it had moved.
The earth above my roots trembled, shapes moved
underneath my greening arms. Prophesy
and rumination, keeper’s toxin.
It was then that understanding started, given voice
and shape by root and sprout, all evergreen
and winter to keep them from spiralling.
Then great slabs of stone marked with spirals,
a sagging shape with its entrails removed,
guttural sound filling the air, evergreen
prayers. They who had come prophesying,
circled around following a voice,
which sang then like a powerful toxin.
Thick walls cannot stop the potent toxin,
but for them it is less of a spiral.
It is sad that they think they have a choice.
Under the dark earth their legs still moving,
walking towards their own prophecy,
a promised land that is evergreen.
The whole time I remain evergreen;
I can split myself, I don’t succumb to toxins.
My hollowed boughs bend low, and prophecies
in the shape of fresh basal shoots spiral
up towards the light. I can feel them move
as if they are my fingers. Then that voice
drawing me back, circular prophecy.
Even as I fall asleep I still move.
I am now many and we are one voice.
Thank you for reading this far! Here’s a BONUS READ if you like lyrical essays. An essay from my Thrutopia collection, entitled Submerged, was also published in The Winged Moon magazine issue two.
I have some news to share with you about the future of this newsletter. I think you will be pleased. But it will have to wait until next time when I will have new poems for you as well.
See you then xxx
The book is brilliant, I have it,. Ideas, colour, form and wonder all spilling across each other like flowers in an English garden on a blustery day.
The collage, the poetry and the book are all incredible. your journey is filled with difficulty and beauty and is so beautifully conveyed. oh and thanks for the link to the magazine. The essay is also amazing! it was a pleasure to publish you!