Full Moon at Little White Alice

In spite of hats, coats and candles, we’re cold and fear
is in the frosty air: for our own health, that of others,
for the planet, our families, businesses and love affairs,
paintings or projects. We’re afraid of moving and changing,

the process by which butterflies leave the chrysalis,
a new-born baby first cries, tearing open her lungs.
Stagnating’s not an option.  Time taunts us: the ticking clock
mocking our bodies, no longer young, a slow decoupling

from our sister moon. We walk in silent meditation round
the high, granite-strewn pool, seeing, as we step with care,
a frill of thin ice form in the reeds along the edge, watch,
amazed, as Rosie suddenly sheds all of her clothes. She dives,

spine curved in a crescent, breaks the black water, sending
courage, like a scatter of stars, up into the still January air.

by Victoria Field

The Weekly Poem is off on holiday for a couple of weeks! The Poetry Centre wishes you a very good start to the summer, and thanks you for reading. The poems will begin again on 9 June.

‘Full Moon at Little White Alice’ is copyright © Victoria Field, 2012. It was first published in Quadrant (Australia) in the January-February 2012 issue, and is collected in The Lost Boys  by Victoria Field, published by Waterloo Press in 2013, and reprinted by permission of  Waterloo Press.

Notes from Waterloo Press

Note: Little White Alice is a granite-quarrying area of Cornwall.

The Lost Boys enlarges Victoria Field’s scope and her poetics with freshness and ambition, whilst drenching her growing readership with the light of place, person and belief. Penelope Shuttle writes: ‘Less pessimistic than R.S. Thomas, T.S. Eliot or Elizabeth Jennings, Victoria Field is that rara avis, the religious poet. Her spiritual realities are firmly anchored in contemporary reality. Her poems illuminate the heart, and shine with richness of compassion and understanding of human predicament and travail.’

Victoria Field is a writer and poetry therapist, now living and working in Canterbury, Kent after many years in Cornwall. The Lost Boys is her third full collection of poetry. She is a previous writer-in-residence at Truro Cathedral and Associate Artist at Hall for Cornwall who produced two of her plays. Her new play, BENSON was showcased at The Marlowe Theatre Canterbury in April 2014. You can read more about her work on her blog, and read further samples of her work on the Waterloo website.

Waterloo Press offers readers an eclectic list of the most stimulating poetry from the UK and abroad. We promote what’s good of its kind, finding a commonality amongst the poets we publish. Our beautifully designed books range from lost modernist classics, translations and vibrant collections by the best British poets around. Our translation list is growing to 25% of our output. Waterloo Press brings radical and marginalised voices to the fore, mirroring their aesthetics in outstanding book design, including dust jackets; large font; and original artwork. With its growing list, Waterloo Press promotes at last a permeable membrane between contemporary schools, quite apart from archiving a few sacred vessels for good. WP fosters a poetics based on innovation with respect for craft, bloody-mindedness and as founder Sonja Ctvrtecka put it: ‘An elegant unstuffiness – a seagull perched on a Porsche.’ Now the major poetry publisher of the south-east, we also believe strongly in a community of like-minded independent presses. We’ve become a land.

Find out more about Waterloo Press via  its website, or ‘like’ the publisher on  Facebook.

Copyright information: please note that the copyrights of all the poems displayed on the website and sent out on the mailing list are held by the respective authors, translators or estates, and no work should be reproduced without first gaining permission from the individual publishers.