Monthly Archives: December 2017

Rescued poetry featured on Jacket2

I’m absolutely thrilled that the delightful Jerome Rothenberg has featured my rescued poetry on Jacket2, a leading online journal that offers commentary on contemporary poetry and poetics. You can read it over here.

He says:

Her procedural poetry, as presented here, adds significantly to the line of such poetry in modern and postmodern writing — in both her poems and poetics. The idea of the “rescued poem” is indubitably her own, and a further collection of poems as examples will shortly be gathered as a book.

Jerome is an eminent American contemporary poet who started his career as a translator of poetry. He is also a highly regarded poetry anthologist, editor and poetic theorist. One of the most well-known anthologies for which he is responsible is the beautiful Technicians of the Sacred, a collection of poetry and incantations from indigenous peoples around the world.

You can read more about Jerome on the Poetry Foundation website.

Thank you so much, Jerome.

…naked stream…

This little rescued poem is the first in a new rescued poetry project I’ve just begun — but, more about that in a future post when I’ve completed some rescue missions and I’m ready to report!

I rescued this poem from two books by Irish author Edna O’Brien: Some Irish Loving (p 251) and Mrs Reinhardt and other stories (p 122).

In the Grainne Mhaol project which I worked on for three years, I topped and tailed rescued poem titles with ellipses so that poems were clearly identifiable as rescued rather than ‘organic’ Grainne narrative poems. (You can read more about that project over here: How a pirate queen helped me become a doctor.) I’m still not sure what I think of the aesthetics of ellipses, but will continue to use them for now. Each rescued poem title is simply an excerpt of a few words or an interesting-sounding phrase from the poem itself.

…naked water…

I lay down by naked water.
I thought I was alone.
A tender fawn walked by, then turned
to meet my eyes. He said:

“Forget your sweetness, little one.
Forget your blush, your glow.
Sins of stone shall haunt your heart,
your flesh will shame you sore.”

Morning in a dress of light
girl in shoes of brown
mountains cold and wild and still:
stream that drank me down.