{"id":5662,"date":"2024-11-15T12:39:03","date_gmt":"2024-11-15T12:39:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=5662"},"modified":"2024-11-15T12:39:03","modified_gmt":"2024-11-15T12:39:03","slug":"romantic-poets-in-the-wild-7-linda-collins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=5662","title":{"rendered":"Romantic Poets in the Wild #7: Linda Collins"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This week we are delighted to feature the poetry of Linda Collins. A New Zealander, Linda has an MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) with distinction from the University of East Anglia. She was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, runner-up in the Mslexia<\/em> poetry contest, and a finalist in the Joy Harjo single poem contest judged by Pulitzer finalist dg nanouk okpik.  Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in bath magg, Lighthouse, Mslexia, <\/em>and Cordite,<\/em> among other; and is in anthologies including All Shall be Well: An Anthology of New Poems for Julian of Norwich<\/em> (Amethyst Press) andA Palace of Verandas \/ Pal\u00e1cio das Varandas<\/em> (Tra\u00e7a Editora, Portugal). Collins is also the author of a memoir, Loss Adjustment<\/em> (Ethos Books Singapore; Awa Press NZ; and Beijing Guangchen, China), about the death by suicide of her 17-year-old daughter, who was herself an emerging poet (Voicing Suicide;<\/em> Ekstasis Editions, Canada). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her current writing projects include a lyric essay on displacement for a chapbook with Faction Press, Singapore; a collaborate poem to celebrate 10 years of Dunedin as a City of Literature; and a poem for an anthology of translation into te reo (the language of New Zealand’s indigenous maori).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Linda Collins. Photo by Malcolm McLeod (Instagram @malpixo).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Her creative practice is informed by the line, “she do the bereaved in different voices”, in Denise Riley’s “A Part Song”, within a framework of poetry that writes to and away from traumatic events. Collins’ work is an inquiry into craft techniques and subject matter, including those of the Oulipo school, that create distance or intimacy with a reader, the tension of attraction and aversion within this, and how, in an age of overexposure, the quaint dance of reveal and conceal creates necessary space for a reader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was lucky enough to work closely with Linda on her manuscript A voiding<\/em> in my role as an editor at Muscaliet Press (muscaliet.co.uk<\/a>). Linda has a playful and lively attention to language and a sense for the properties of a poetic line that really come to the fore in this currently unpublished collection. The poems dance between a writerly joie de vivre<\/em> and a sense of deep feeling, exemplifying, to my mind, Coleridge’s idea that a really good poet needs both wit and sensibility. I regret that we have not yet been able to bring A voiding <\/em>out for publication as a part of Muscaliet’s award-winning chapbook series. However, I hope you will enjoy this selection of poems from A voiding<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

things with feathers <\/strong>\n\nMy train delayed, I turn my back\non Woodbridge town centre, and set off along the riverside walk \nin the hope\nof revelling in my solitary self.\nBroad-bottomed boats clink anchors like old wives\nhaving a natter and a glass of prosecco. I wave, abstractly,\nand around the corner in the distance there's a wave back\nfrom a woman in a shocking\npink dress with feather boa trim, ballet slippers, a wand,\nholding a box labelled Sleeping Beauty Costume, and at that fairy moment magicked\nbehind her come zombies and vampires,\noh, and a child with an axe through his head. \nSleeping Beauty in passing, in teacher voice\nexplains School Halloween charity walk. The children are quite safe<\/em>. \nSafe?! How do I proceed\nthrough these lines of laughing nightmare-children? \n\nA schoolboy Superman and his Robin rush up,\nperhaps safety is reciprocal, a lone older woman \nis quite safe; point excitedly to three fairies\nby the reeds of the shore feeding white swans.\n\u2018Those girls are swan-whisperers,\u2019 they tell me with besotted awe. Fairies caress\n                                                                   white breasts at the heaving. \nTeacher shouts, Hurry up. This way<\/em>. The fairies are leaving.\nSwans arch sleek necks\nseeking last remains of Panko pixie dust. I brush something from the breast\nof my velvet lapel. \nA crumb? A tear? A feather?  \n\nI held a cygnet once.\n<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
to laugh like her<\/strong>\n\nThe wind is blowing a story\tshaking up your silence \nscattering grains of black sand  across the frame of memory \na girl in a pink vest, skipping, humming, laughing\nchild-pudgy fingers scoop white mussel shell\nor is the child the wind\tthe eye of it? the eye of the whirlwind \na whirling djinn of sand grains and shell bones\n  across frames, stills  still grainy frames\tcelluloid strips edged in black\t  sand\n\nthe girl-djinn dancing  laughing as waves clap the sands, \nwave-mist rising to the space in between\nsea tide  sand & the safety of landfall \nsinging her laugh-song to nearby rocks\nto waves\twave in wave out all wave long \nthe wave length of the wave long & longer \ninto the crack\t into the hollows\ninto the shallows of all life\u2019s rock hollows\n\nhollows at the edge of the space\nbetween life & death sea\t       sandstone   the girl falling away \n& the djinn is laughing joy-laughter let loose from the breath\nof her  breathing the breath of her the filling of her hollow\nthe hollows of her clavicle heaving \/ laughing  laughter, it will follow\n\nto laugh like her  open your mouth\nfeel the mist on your face\t the gritty sand\nunder your toes\t          surrender to the sea\t depart the land \nit is not submitting it is not losing\nbe part of it\tgrow or dissolve in that power\t  the heart of it \nit is living in the  in the    midst of the missed\na child lost\tyears now\tmemory a swirl of mist\n\nto laugh like her is to remember her\nopen your mouth\t       allow the wound to weep \nopen your rictus mouth\t  to the sky\nyou live still\tthough you, too, will die\n<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
 flowers losing their heads  <\/strong>                                \n\n\n                                                                   In the cemetery, daffodils butter-dust\n                                                                                 grass above a once-body,\n                                                                                     nourish the remnants\n                                                          of a \u2018gone-too-soon\u2019; nature so busy rephrasing\n                                                                                      dreary \u2018here lies\u2019,\n                                                                                         into an emo tune\n                                                                                         for adolescence,\n                                                                                              with a nod,\n                                                                                                    yeah,\n                                                                                           to Evanesence. \n                                                                                                        .\n                                                                                    Petals scatter pollen\n                                                                                   in time to wind gusts,\n                                                                                    in time to four time,\n                                                 wild-flowers are wild, are my wild-child, they flourish,\n                                                                                 they flourish untouched.\n\n\n                                                             In the cemetery, a cold snap snaps them, yet\n                                             they spring up,\n                                             they spring up.\n                                                                      Stems bend toward their lost heads,\n                                                                                 unfettered blooms bounce\n                                                                                         on the once-body\n                                                                                   in time to wind gusts;\n                                                                             broken they bust solo moves,\n                                                            strobe floor aglow, butter-dust, butter-dust.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
never leaving<\/strong>\n\nThe light linen curtains of summer have been drawn\nin every room and secured together with clothes pegs.\nEach bed is made, ready for arrival months or years\nfrom now. The skirting has been sprayed for earwigs,\nspider webs have been wiped away,\nthough all will come back when silence settles.\n\nThe tank water has been turned off and the last of it\ndribbles into the sink. The fridge still hums,\nthe power stays on for the freezer\u2019s bounty\nof stewed rhubarb, vegetables from the garden,\nbagged up, stiff, in a hope-chest prone to mould.\n\nYour writing shed has been closed up, \nsheaves of poem fragments filed under memories.\nCopies of your books are already dusty, you leave them that way.\n\nSuitcases have been dragged out to the car,\na last goodbye is said to the girl in school uniform\nsmiling aged fourteen in a photo above the TV,\nwhere Tibetan prayer bells loll on a shelf\nnext to a souvenir from Raffles Hotel.\nYou tell her to look after the place, \nits ghosts. The lock is turned at the back door,\nthe security camera captures you giving it the finger.\n\nAll the leave-takings of all the years\nclimb into the car with you, \nthey are eager for a change of scene.\nThe speckled thrush you called\nMissus Busy-Body Thrush, found dead\nsix years ago in the driveway, nestles\nin the passenger foot-well, quite happy.\n<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Join us next time when we will feature something a little different: the Romantically-inspired sketches of artist Brenna Cameron Lopes. Visual media! Until then, stay frosty (but not too a-cold).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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