ANNA RECKIN     poet, writer, teacher
  • Home
  • Poems
  • Publications
  • Teaching
  • About
  • Events
  • Links
  • Contact

Below is a selection of poems from my books. Click here for poems and readings published online.



Larga
 
Technically, a square
         but sometimes, especially in the villages – where roads leave off their making-strait,
rest awhile, swill outwards,                 t

                                                   s                 a

                                                            r
 
                                                    on an anyhows slope. Rainwater run-off, possibly a view
 
And a monument. Slender pillar, more or less centred.  A globe, a cross
weather-eaten, on a pedestal
                                                                                            stony focus                              against
                                                                                                                                            which    
 

(first published in Poetry Wales, included in Line to Curve, 2018)


Hanging down
 
 
 – Why does it matter?
 
 – That they’re hanging?  It’s the sound –
 
 – When they break?
                                                           
– When they knock against each other, as the wearer moves through the room. Or when they’re strung on a wooden frame, tapped with ivory, say, to make music. Graduated, all in strict order
 
 
                                etiquette of tinkling chimes  Stones
                            obstructing flowing plucked ripples, scale
                                              silken strings
           
 
– What if they fall? If the thread snaps?  Or someone cuts it? Or it rots away?
 
                                                 rungs rules
 
                        
 – They’ll be silent a while. Laid out in a tray on a stall of curios; hidden            
away in a drawer; in a glass box, with labels; numbers inked on their            
sides
                                Or left underground. Disarticulated, flat, in scattered piles
 

 (from The Jade Album sequence, first published in Long Poem Magazine, included in Line to Curve, 2018)
 

Pieces

         right on cue
                                 the magpie,

broken white
                         I don't want to pick up

    and the weather, of course,


   so when sunshine joins the damp
   I'm turning round & around
   looking for indigo-violet stripes, 
                                    a different pattern

   stronger than re-assembly, the tug
   and pull of resemblance

                                     much, much later, the rain
                      
(from Three Reds, 2011)


Chypres

I
 
 
                         oak-moss, bergamot, rock-rose        sweet
 
                                   
                                               patchouli, musk
 
 
Close harmony so tight
 
                                              it squeals
 
                                               
                  hesperides                                            the rasp of viols
 


II
 
 
     [rose-madder, old rose, damascone inlay]
 
     table-carpet, with the stove underneath; coal in the brazier.
     Leaves, petals, stems compressed : exhale
                                   
            close- [soft ess]  
 
                                                  held             a room

 
(from the Compositions sequence, published in Three Reds, 2011)          

                



Photograph: leeks and onions (Edith Summerhayes, 2012)
Proudly powered by Weebly