Looking forward to hearing these being read on Sundy morning.
David
This reads to me as complete. I love the conversational tone, the sort of
easy familiarity with a future ancestor ;-) And I love the way you bring
musical references into many of your poems, ranging from classical to folk.
Your voice is very distinctive in your poems and is so in this. I don’t
think there’s much to do except maybe a few picky, tightening up thing. The
sentence in the 1st stanza starting “I suspect …” feels a little over
complex – does it need another “if” before “still”? Maybe get rid of some
hackneyed phrases like “so forth” and “as I said” though maybe they add to
the conversational tone but I don't think you talk like that. You keep us
on our toes with your capitalisation – the last poem had the 1st letter of
each line capitalised, whereas this on has no capitalisation at all!
Definitely a keeper.
Rach
You know I can see this as a short film. Get Andrew onto it. Starts off in
colour with your voice-over, walking down Rundle Street towards 281 and
then fades to black and white / sepia …. etc. It would be great.
A great recounting of your memories of childhood with so much rich detail.
Bound to get a place in the Anthology. I can’t fault it overall, it works
really well and has no bullshit in it. Love bits like the pinching of your
cheek, the wince about “colonial slum”, the toy horse and some lovely
language like the world finding its daytime shape.
I think my only reservation is the ending. I’m a bit suspicious of words
arranged differently unless I can see a reason for it. I can’t see that the
splitting of the last line into 4 does much – is it because the line would
be too long without splitting it. An option might be to end the poem at
“dissolves” or even “ache”? Feels like “to once more …” is spelling it out
a bit too much. Be interesting to hear if others feel the same. If not,
ignore me.
Jools
Love the title. Love “playing Fortnite all fortnight”. Lots of great
childhood images. Maybe a bit of of tightening here and there. Perhaps
lose: “in brooks” and replace with another activity? an ”and” before “Tiny
Tears” maybe. Drastic idea - consider splitting into 2 sections, numbered
say i and ii , the ii starting at “Now it’s x-box” but from the same pov
but of you if you were a child of today? That would mean losing / replacing
some of the last stanza which feels a little bit preachy.
Jen
Yes, very sad to hear of Eavan Boland’s passing. This is a lovely tribute
to her. I think the 2nd stanza is very strong and could stand alone as a
complete poem. Possible changes – should “remember” be past tense to fit
with 1st 2 lines? (But I know you are constrained by the words available
from the text so you probably can’t do this).
The first stanza – “glossing” doesn’t feel right. My drastic suggestion is
to lose the 1st 2 lines and the last 2 lines. I love from “Moments..” to
“here?”. But then it doesn’t really roll into the 2nd stanza, which takes
me back to maybe dropping the 1st stanza altogether.
Gaby
Love the title and the way you’ve opened with your mother’s strange idea.
(I had to google it of course, and found some discussion about whether
taking large amounts of oil will destabilise the earth. I once had a
discussion with an Irish taxi driver who told me that “the Rooshans are
building a fecking great lake in Roosha and the earth is like a balloowan,
and will rotate like a balloowan with water inside it, and Ireland will end
up where Spain is now”.)
Love the remember bits – schools, parks, pizza etc. the images of raft
rides and swampy paths all work really well. The couplets are a good choice
of layout.
My only reservations are whether the connections work in the first half. So
the earth shifting back is a great idea, and time moving differently is
too, but I’m not sure I can see a connection. Hard to explain. If you said
that you feel unbalanced now, I could see the connection with the earth
shifting.
Similarly, the image of the recoil of the gun is great, but I’m not sure I
can see it as a slow march into the future. Again maybe it’s just me and
I’m reading it too closely, because these things didn’t worry me at all on
first reading.
Mike
