Category: Anvil Press

The Flight of the Sparrow

~ oxfordbrookesuni

‘My lord, although we cannot know
The mysteries of the afterlife
The span of time we spend on earth
Appears to me to be like this:
Imagine sitting in your hall
In winter, feasting with your chiefs
And counsellors – your faces glowing
From flames that crackle in the hearth.
Outside, the wintry night is lashed
By winds and driving rain and snow.
Suddenly a sparrow darts in
Through a door, flits across the hall
And flies out through another one.
Inside, cocooned in light and warmth
It can enjoy a moment’s calm
Before it vanishes, rejoining
The freezing night from which it came. 

Such is our journey through this life.
But as to what’s in store for us
Beyond the doors of birth and death
We are completely in the dark.’

by James Harpur

from The Monk’s Dream
Anvil, 1996
Copyright © James Harpur 1996

James Harpur had two new collections of poems out in October 2007, but this is from an earlier book, The Monk’s Dream. It is a good example of his skill in using an anecdote to telling poetic effect – the vignette of the sparrow comes from Bede’s A History of the English Church and People, 11:13. Harpur’s style combines plainness, i.e. under- rather than over-statement, and elegance. His two new collections are The Dark Age, with poems focusing on the “dark ages” of Europe and the struggles of early Christianity; and Fortune’s Prisoner, a translation of the poems from Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy.

Born in 1956 of Anglo-Irish parents, Harpur studied Classics and then English at Trinity College. He now lives in Co. Cork, Ireland. As well as his three collections of poetry from Anvil, A Vision of Comets, The Monk’s Dream and Oracle Bones, he is author of Love Burning in the Soul: The Story of the Christian Mystics, from Saint Paul to Thomas Merton (Shambhala, 2005).

Anvil Press Poetry was founded in 1968 and publishes English-language poetry and poetry in translation, both classic and modern.

This is the last Weekly Poem for 2007 – a very Happy Christmas and New Year to you all.

The Dress

~ oxfordbrookesuni

Then it will stand alone and listen to the new silence,
feel the empty air breathe in and out and where it will,
filling old creases, blowing away warm impressions.
Itself again, chaste, regal, as if it had been waiting
for this moment to return to its mannequin form;
delicate husk, untouched, unworn, it can hang now
if it wants, swing its lonely folds behind a door.

In time it might forget the body who lived inside it,
that quick and lovely thing whose eager skin filled
to bursting every curve and seam. It might forget
the first stain, the nips and small tears, the cunning
unravelling of thread that followed as a matter of course before
the final tumble, the fumbling, the cursing and the rip
when it was thrown across the floor to lie, flayed

– perhaps ruined, as it had to be taken away,
laid out beneath an interrogation of lights
where a man in a gown, in a whirl of steam and gas, bowed
his head to the task: to remove the occasion from the dress.
And when it was done he wrapped it up and it shone
from so much attention and loss, its intimate tucks and folds
re-pressed, dry, clean and beautifully stitched up.

by Greta Stoddart

from At Home in the Dark
Anvil, 2001
Copyright © Greta Stoddart 2001

This poem is from Greta Stoddart’s debut collection, an outstanding book for which she was awarded the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for 2002. Like all her poems it bears re-reading and mulling over. Jo Shapcott wrote of her that she is ‘an unnervingly good poet. Her poems are deceptively serene, characterized by an elegiac tone under which a suggestion of unease constantly shivers . . . always musical, always true, these are poems to dwell on’. The way this poem withholds and then reveals the dress’s history in the final stanza shows Greta Stoddart’s skill in what one might call the manipulative side of dramatic poetry, if manipulative were not now a word with negative connotations.

Greta Stoddart was born in Henley-on-Thames in 1966 and grew up in Belgium and Oxford. Having lived and studied in Paris and Manchester, she now lives in London where she works as poetry tutor at Morley College.

Anvil Press Poetry was founded in 1968 and publishes English-language poetry and poetry in translation, both classic and modern.

The Last Time I Saw Paris

~ oxfordbrookesuni

Will I never see Paris again? It may well be.
Or Salina Cruz? Almost certainly.
But London: surely I’ll live that long.
And Ischia, Naples, Capri – I must see them again,
        Although I don’t know when.
        Not tomorrow, but soon.

And which are the dishes I have unwittingly
Tasted a final time? Stewed tripe? I can live
With that. Various fruits peculiar to Brazil.
But not, I beg of fate, Aunt Cece’s lemon pudding.
        For I mean to make some more.
        Not tomorrow, but soon.

And which are the friends I’ll see no more,
Whether by their demise or mine,
Or merely through the slow attrition
Of concern: what are their names?
        If I knew, I’d phone.
        Not tomorrow, but soon.

by Tom Disch