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Lesley Harrison ~ poetry etc

January 19, 2018

The Dooble Tongue: Modern Poetry and Translation. University of Aberdeen, 20th January 2018

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October 15, 2017October 15, 2017

Launch of ‘Blue Pearl’ in New York

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May 24, 2017April 22, 2019

‘Ethie Woods’ in Woodland Trust anthology

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January 11, 2017August 30, 2017

Húsavík Whale Museum

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January 11, 2017April 17, 2017

Nes, Skagaströnd

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November 20, 2016August 30, 2017

Blue Pearl

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November 12, 2016May 24, 2017

North Sea poetries

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November 12, 2016March 2, 2018

One Bird Flying

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November 12, 2016

Ecstatics : a language of birds

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DISAPPEARANCE

DISAPPEARANCE     [extract]

I must have disturbed him when I came up the companion .… He was unapproachable, as a misfit should be.
– Donald Crowhurst, logbook of the Teighnmouth Electron. 29th January 1969.

 

[…]
How, singlehanding in a bad storm,
light-poor, deprived of sleep, beyond isolation

and fatigue as the boat took a beating
shedding green tons, letting the dark in

through shuddering deck boards;
working at waking, the tiller jammed hard

at his side while the boat leaned and leaned,
the second up front, watching the sea’s sliding surface

as it brimmed and fell while he nursed the boat across
great holes that closed and opened

beside them, the two of them watching for minutes
as the storm fretted and at last began

to fail, the boat butting forward, correcting its roll
in small calms, riding weightless

as the surface formed
itself and held, the wind sighing

in one vast outbreath,
and then he was alone again.

 

From Disappearance : North Sea Poems, publ. Shearsman, 2020.

[Photo from Bas Jan Ader: In Search of the Miraculous, by Door Jan Verwoert. MIT Press, 2006.]

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