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DILYS ROSE / KAREN KNIGHT
A writing collaboration
- It must have been shortly before Karen
was due to leave Varuna (early June, 2006?) that we began to speak about the possibility
of some kind of collaboration. She was due to come to Scotland the following September. As
it all seemed quite definite at the time, I borrowed a small suitcase of hers to
accommodate bits and pieces (mostly books) I’d accumulated in Australia. The plan was
that she could then fill her little suitcase with anything she’d picked up in
Scotland. The suitcase at this moment, awaits her visit (in spring 2007). In the meantime,
since midsummer/midwinter 2006, we’ve been writing a poem a month and corresponding
in between times with news and gossip, queries about how the poems were going,
suggestions. I sent Karen a collaboration between two Scottish based poets, Tom Pow and
Diana Hendry (Sparks, Mariscat Press) to get her opinion on what we should do. In Sparks,
the poets gave each other alternate tasks, often quite formally specific. We decided to go
for doing the same task, writing monthly on the same topic, the aim being to find points
of comparison and of contrast between our geographically distant lives. Neither of us was
particularly keen on formal stipulations and have found that the more open the remit, the
better the results. We began very simply with a poem about midsummer/midwinter because it
was happening, at the moment we committed ourselves. It’s been a great way to keep up
a long distance correspondence, not to mention generating new work. I think we’re
both now looking forward to speaking face to face and, later sending Karen’s little
suitcase, filled with things Scottish, on a return journey to Tassie.
Dilys Rose
DILYS ROSE
The Stilled Sun
- Light has squeezed the darkness
- into a narrow seam of night.
- Birdsong features 20/24.
- You sleep differently: dreams
- are shallow, fleeting, restless;
- as if you should be up all hours,
- getting on with what needs doing.
- Grass challenges the lawnmower.
- The cellar booms for mop
- and broom and rubbish bags.
- Shrubs whinge for the pruning shears.
- The laundry nips your ear:
- Peg me, peg me on the green.
- Windowboxes beseech the watering can.
- Weeds taunt the trowel.
- The kitchen windows, last washed
- - admit it! – on Christmas Eve,
- still bear the wingprints of a robin:
- on Christmas morning it flew indoors,
- trapped itself between two plates of
glass
- (then, treacherously clean) before
- you eased it out into the snow.
- Get busy. Delay and you’ll miss your
chance.
- The moment, hovering in the wide bowl
- of the stilled sun, will pass;
- the world will turn on its axis;
- night will spill its ink once more.
- But if you go for the squeegee
- might you wipe away forever
- that wintry, red-breasted moment?
- KAREN KNIGHT
-
-
- Winter Solstice
-
-
- The annual Antarctic depression
- wrapped in a thick gauze of cloud
- rides pillion with the Bridgewater Jerry
-
- across the Derwent River
- over the tops of hills
- round as a nudist colony
-
- like a fog snake
- it sheds its skin
- trails a giant smudge through the city
-
- The homeless stand between
- freeze and thaw.
- They are frost shadows
-
- holding the ice
- long after their sorrows
- have melted around them.
- DILYS ROSE
-
- Brasso
-
- Now that the fairy lights have been
stashed
- for next year and the tree, brittle,
scentless,
- sprawls on the pavement, a Ne’erday
casualty,
- what will offset the darkness pressing
down
-
- like a heavy hand? I fetch the Java
plate,
- shipped home by grandparents before
- the red gong of The Rising Sun,
- the camps where anything to hand
-
- was sold for food. Meant for cakes,
- the plate summons: gin and quinine,
- fields of tea; two strangers on the
veranda.
- The price of privilege almost killed
them.
-
- The price of poverty was even higher.
- Slowly, tarnish – a year’s
worth – ingrained
- in the ceremonial skirts and headdress
- of a long-nosed deity loosens, pools
-
- on the dull brass disc, soaks
- grubby rags, leaches into my hands.
- The more I buff, the more pours out:
- such an intensity of blackness.
-
- No stopping now, not until the plate
gives up
- its last black bead of memory, not until
- my bent reflection overlays an alien,
- androgynous deity. It’s mine, this
heirloom sun.
-
-
-
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- KAREN KNIGHT
-
- Here Comes the Sun Man
-
- Early this morning
- when the air was a lavender farm
- he came in a Giorgio Armani suit
- with a briefcase of summers.
-
- He offered me the Bay of Fires
- where the heat of the ocean
- has been elbow tested
- and the shallows are x-ray green.
-
- Where the late sun paints
- the sea rocks scarlet
- and the sand is white
- as English skin.
-
- His spiel was flawless.
- He sold me a summer
- without any shade.
- I felt the subcutaneous sting.
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