Dear friends,
I hope this Sunday finds you well. I was under the weather a little this week and lost a couple of days. Thank all the gods for esomeprazole, a medication whose Italian-sounding name I repeat to myself with gratitude and relish, always imagining it should really be describing some delicious dessert from Milano.
It’s a short one from me this week, because I want to respond to your replies from last week.
While groaning with stomachache (I’m exaggerating now) I watched an episode or two of KAOS, which I enjoyed thoroughly. One of the things I love about the Greek myths is how petty, jealous, dangerous, and whim-driven the gods are. Their dangers and hungers are our dangers and hungers, just on a bigger scale.
Then I read this, from John Kelly’s second collection:
Bottles
A small boy enters the enclosure – an iron, floodlit maze of bottle-banks. It’s late, and he should not be here. His hunched-up father watches from the car. The boy works quickly, relentlessly, shoving bottle after bottle after bottle into a dark and open O – each one exploding brutally like a brawl in a stinking hull, or in the belly of a bomb-proof bunker in the sand. The glass is always green or brown or clear; the bottles mostly vodka, brandy, wine. When the job is done, he backs away. He keeps the bags for again. His father, straightening, starts the car. The boy has fed the Minotaur.
From Space by John Kelly (Dedalus Press)
That “dark and open O” is a powerful and visual line — that awful alliteration that threatens to swallow everything. The poem describes a temporary sacrifice, and, like many temporary sacrifices, it is a tragedy. I have been thinking about what poetry does, and one of the things it does is pay attention. These lines don’t contain self-pity, just the difficult art of noticing. You can see why I made the leap from a television programme about Greek gods to this poem. There is no Minotaur story without the story of the Minotaur’s origin, the unsatisfied need of the father of the monster.
No prompt from me today; I’ll be replying to your last week’s comments this week.
One note of news from me: I have some books coming out in early 2025, and pre-orders help authors hugely in book economics of these days. Kitchen Hymns (US/Ireland & UK) is a volume of my own poems, and 44 Poems on Being with Each Other (US/Ireland & UK) is a Poetry Unbound anthology, with essays from me.
I’ll see you in last week’s comments! And I’ll see you here next week,
Poetry in the World
A list of events: Online; in the US (New York City and Rhinebeck, NY; Kent, OH; Norfolk, VA; Durham, NC ); in Canada (Hamilton); and the Scottish island of Iona
September 17, New York City, New York, US, and Online
The brilliant Palestinian American poet and medic Fady Joudah has won the Jackson Poetry Prize, and I’ll be interviewing him at at The Greene Space at 7 pm. The fee for in-person tickets is $16, and online attendance is free. Info and registration here.
September 19–21, Kent, Ohio, US
I’m looking forward to being part of the 40th anniversary of the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University, alongside Naomi Shihab Nye, Jane Hirshfield, and Adrian Matejka. You can register here, and find more information about the celebratory events here.
October 6–11, Rhinebeck, New York, US
I’m back for a week at Omega (just two hours north of NYC) for a week of reflection on poetry, poetry prompts, and group discussions. Expect lovely people, gorgeous surroundings and food, and conversations about how poetry opens your world. Learn more here.
October 13, Online
I’ll be giving the 2024 Annual Roy Bradley Oration online — a lecture titled “Things Known and Strange” — with the Australia’s Centre for Spirituality of Care and Community. It’s free and will be at 7:30 pm Eastern Australia time, which, I think, is 4:30 am Eastern time US (where I’ll be) or 9:30 am in Ireland. If you want to go, just email secretary[@]cscc.org.au
October 26–27, Norfolk, Virginia, US
I’ll be giving some readings, a class, and a reflection, hosted by the good people of Christ & St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. Details will be on their website shortly.
October 30, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
I’ll be giving a lecture on literature and health at the Faculty of Health Sciences at McMaster University as part of the Hooker Lecture 2024 series. Details are coming soon.
November 3, 10, 17, 24, December 1, Online
Fill your Sunday evenings with peculiarity, poetry, and ancient literature: I’ll be giving new online lectures on “Strange Stories of the Bible”. You can register here.
November 18–19 Durham, North Carolina, US
I’m giving the William Preston Few lecture at Duke University. I’ll share details here as they emerge.
March 10–15 and March 18–23 2025, Isle of Iona, Scotland
I’m holding two Poetry Unbound retreats on the gorgeous Scottish island of Iona; each retreat is the same. Both retreats are booked up, but you can get on the waiting list by contacting the folks at the St. Columba here. October 13, Online
I absolutely loved the poetry unbound book as I enjoy finding out about new poets. I wil pre order these.
I liked the John Kelly poem as it is such a “noticing” of the sort other poets might never see. The times I have witnessed the shameful clanking as someone rushed round the containers as quickly as possible as if destroying the evidence! How humane of him to notice without judgement.
I loved Poetry Unbound and will order the next two books. Hope you recover, as you share your noticing of the world, of our spirits and of complexity. Reading your substack is like Forest bathing. Thank you for sharing even when you are exhausted.