Zoology / Gillian Clarke.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Clarke, Gillian, 1937- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Snowdon (Wales)--Poetry.

Snowdon (Wales).

Wales--Snowdon.

Genre:

Poetry.

Physical Description:

117 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

Manchester : Carcanet, 2017.

Summary:

Zoology is Gillian Clarke's ninth Carcanet collection, following her T. S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted Ice. The collection opens with a glimpse of hare, whose 'heartbeat halts at the edge of the lawn', holding us 'in the planet of its stare'. Within this millisecond of mutual arrest, a well of memories draws us into the Welsh landscape of the poet's childhood: her parents, the threat of war, the richness of nature as experienced by a child. In the second of the collection's six parts we find ourselves in the Zoology Museum, whose specimens stare back from their cases: the Snowdon rainbow beetle, the marsh fritillary, the golden lion tamarin. 'Will we be this beautiful when we pass into the silence, behind glass?' In later sections the poet invites us to Hafod Y Llan, the Snowdonian nature reserve rich in Alpine flowers and abandoned mineshafts, 'where darkness laps at the brink of a void deep as cathedrals'. Clarke captures a complete cycle of seasons on the land, its bounty and hardship, from the spring lamb 'birthed like a fish / steaming in moonlight' to the ewe bearing her baby 'in the funeral boat of her body'. The poems tap into a powerful, feminist empathy that sees beyond differentiations of species to an understanding deeper than knowledge, something subterranean, running through the land. Zoology closes with a series of elegies to friends, poets and peers, and poems remembering victims of war and tyrannical regimes. 'Like a bird picking over / the September lawn, / I gather their leaves. / This is what silence is.' Then our hare, that 'flight of sinew and gold', is spotted one last time: 'a silvering wind crossing a field, / two ears alert in a gap / then gone'. --cover.

Contents:

I Missing

The Presence p. 13

Ghosts p. 14

Exhuming Your Father p. 15

Contre-Jour p. 16

Learning to Swim p. 17

Patagonia p. 18

Waves p. 19

Pampas Grass p. 20

Missing p. 21

The Poet p. 22

II Behind Glass

Silent p. 25

Archacopteryx p. 26

Ichthyosaur p. 27

The Company of Bones p. 28

Dodo p. 29

Marsh Fritillaries p. 30

The Snowdon Rainbow Beetle p. 31

III Hafod Y Llan

Mountain p. 35

Mine p. 36

River p. 37

Barracks p. 38

Flowers of the Mountain p. 39

IV One Year

A Year at Hafod Y Llan p. 43

Last Gather p. 45

Oestrus p. 46

Alchemy p. 48

Old Ram p. 49

Scan p. 51

Black p. 52

Labour p. 54

Birth p. 55

Stillborn p. 56

Mothering p. 57

Dead Ewe p. 58

To the Mountain p. 59

Cynefin p. 60

The Wethers Leave the Mountain p. 62

V

Insect p. 67

Queen p. 68

Watchman p. 69

How To Put Together A Robin p. 70

How To Take Apart A Tree p. 71

The Pontfadog Oak p. 72

Wild Laburnum p. 73

Especially When the West Wind p. 74

Storwm Awst p. 76

Blind September p. 77

Wind p. 79

Damage p. 80

Audiology p. 81

Epidural p. 82

Cantre'r Gwaelod p. 83

Hafod p. 85

Sycharth p. 87

Dinefwr p. 88

Chawton p. 89

Magnetism p. 90

Ironing p. 91

Messengers p. 92

White Lilies p. 93

Where to Place a Chair p. 94

The Centuries' Poetry: Hopkins to Eliot p. 95

In A Cardiff Arcade, 1952 p. 96

The Scribe p. 97

Words p. 98

VI Elegies

The Blackbird p. 101

The Brown Hare p. 103

Barley p. 104

Eisteddfod of the Black Chair p. 105

Last Letter Home p. 106

Madiba p. 107

Daughter p. 108

Olwen p. 109

Birdsong p. 110

Flight p. 111

New Moon p. 112.

ISBN:

1784102164

9781784102166

OCLC:

965344453