24 sonnets in Welsh with translations. He mentions in an interview that Wales doesn't have much of a sonnet tradition. He mentions Terrance Hayes as an influence. Here are some extracts -
- the words of his sermon as dead seagulls' feathers/ lost on the wind between genesis and the sea (p.9)
- This is the living imagination,/ the dying memory, the sound that is no sound/ as there is no ear to hear it nor any machine/ to record it, like the scream of the smallest creature/ in the wide and shadowy wood (p.23)
- I took your voice from the shattered cliffs,/and tried, before returning to the long kitchen/ and the lounge of too many flowers, to steal the sea's/ ancient knowing from the sun and salt in our cracked lip (p.33)
- In the memorial garden that has forgotten the reason for/ its neat existence and seasonal flowers, I imagine/ the slow unrest near the surface, the beds/ bursting their banks, a snaking,/ a spreading: the jubilation of becoming a weed/ and letting everything go (p.41)
- A scholar who cannot believe, despite all learning,/ that Wales too wears a shift of bones;/ that this land is no verdant paradise, but swollen with blood,/ dripping with the complexities of conscience and memory (p.45)
- not watching the walls lest they should not be there,/ lest the stones should become curtains around us,/ lest the wind should gallop through, ripping the fabric/ leaving us naked in a breath that was once a room (p.53)
It's not my sort of poetry - it might sound good, but to me it doesn't survive scrutiny.
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