THOMAS A CLARK, THREADBARE ~

 

the shape changer

                ______________________________

once I was a deer

stepping under trees

my form always broken

by lights and shadows

then I was a wildcat

leaping up and away

from the traces of my own

rigour and ferocity

in a fold of hills

nodding with flowers

I took on many

shapes and colours

seldom was I present

to myself in a form

half as alluring

as what I might become

again I was a goldcrest

a bright fragment of song

moving through the forest

leading farther in

at times defeated

reduced to stone

I lay disregarded

concealed in the open

then I was a juniper

turning to take the slope

pausing and bracing myself

above a sheer drop

and once I was a dragonfly

for an afternoon

little more than a notion

of the stillness and the green

_______________________

The Threadbare Coat

Selected Poems

Carcanet, UK, 2020

we celebrate our wedding anniversary

today with a dear poetry friend

RE-READING IAN HAMILTON FINLAY ~

— Finlay’s work, both as a poet and as a visual artist, is deeply traditional, in that it depends upon elements drawn from the whole history of Western culture; at the same time, it is deeply experimental, in that the deployment of these elements takes place in ways that are new, unexpected, and demanding. The method of reading each poem is not explained in advance by poetic conventions: it has to be intuited from the form presented by each individual poem.

                                                — Stephen Scobie

    

A wonderful glimpse of Finlay's correspondence

with a number of poets, including Robert Creeley,

Gael Turnbull, Ronald Johnson, Louis Zukofsky

and the editor of this volume Thomas A. Clark

on poetry and making. Finlay 1964:

"I am now very interested in the idea of using

poetry in architecture, and have designed poems for

large sheets of glass, and for the outsides of houses. . .though 

none of these projects have yet been realised. I am

sure they will, though, one day. I am also very

interested in toys — not for children, though,

but as pure objects. . .with simple shapes,

in bright colours. I would like to do many things,

when there is the opportunity."

There is a spirit here in Ian that only the birds know.

[ BA ]

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