Out of the Blue
Authors: Helen Dunmore
HELEN DUNMORE
OUT OF THE BLUE
‘An electrifying and original talent, a writer whose style is characterised by a lyrical, dreamy intensity’ –
GUARDIAN
A celebrated winner of fiction’s Orange Prize, Helen Dunmore is as spellbinding a storyteller in her poetry as in her novels. As in her fiction, these haunting narratives draw us into darkness, engaging our fears and hopes in poetry of rare luminosity. Her poems also cast a bright, revealing light on the living world, by land and sea, on love, longing and loss.
Out of the Blue
presents a comprehensive selection from her seven
previous
books of poetry. It also includes a collection of completely new poems remarkable for their sensuous magic, sharp delicacy and sureness of touch.
‘One of this country’s finest literary talents’ –
DAILY TELEGRAPH
‘Dunmore gets a wonderful balance between delicate, exact, surprising
language
and very strong thought – which may be bitter, sardonic, or violent, tender, or wildly imaginative, but is always generous… A lovely poetic
electricity
runs through her poems’ –
SEAN O’BRIEN
&
RUTH PADEL
,
PBS Bulletin
‘This is a poet whose words can be savoured on the tongue’ –
IAIN CRICHTON SMITH
,
Glasgow Herald
‘At once intimate and strange…Celebrations mingle with apprehensions throughout this volume, which in a sense lights candles for the human journey, its homecomings, its departures, its comforts, its finalities. These are statements of faith as well as recognitions of our double nature, our fears and weaknesses’ –
PETER PEGNALL
,
London Magazine
COVER PICTURE
On Botallack Head, 6pm, 24.4.99, strong sun and westerly winds
by Kurt Jackson
(THE GREAT ATLANTIC MAP WORKS GALLERY)
Piers Plowman: The Crucifixion & Harrowing of Hell
The last day of the exhausted month
Ollie and Charles at St Andrew’s Park
Landscape from the Monet Exhibition at Cardiff
The bride’s nights in a strange village
I imagine you sent back from Africa
In memoriam Cyril Smith 1913–1945
Porpoise washed up on the beach
Lady Macduff and the primroses
Patrick at four years old on Bonfire Night
Missile launcher passing at night
Code-breaking in the Garden of Eden
Shadows of my mother against a wall
A meditation of the glasshouses
On circuit from Heptonstall Chapel
US 1st Division Airborne Ranger at rest in Honduras
One more for the beautiful table
An Irish miner in Staffordshire
FROM
Short Days, Long Nights
(1991)
Sisters leaving before the dance
Three Ways of Recovering a Body
You came back to life in its sweetness
Poem on the Obliteration of 100,000 Iraqi Soldiers
He lived next door all his life
Sometimes in the rough garden of city spaces
I should like to be buried in a summer forest
All the things you are not yet
Basketball player on Pentecost Monday
Little Ellie and the timeshare salesman
INDEX OF TITLES AND FIRST LINES
This book includes all the poems which Helen Dunmore wishes to keep in print from her previous Bloodaxe collections
The Apple Fall
(1983),
The Sea Skater
(1986),
The Raw Garden
(1988),
Short Days, Long Nights: New & Selected Poems
(1991),
Recovering a Body
(1994) and
Bestiary
(1997), together with a new collection,
Out of the Blue
(2001), and a selection of poems for children previously published in
Secrets
(Bodley Head, 1994).
Acknowledgements are due to the editors of the following
publications
in which some of the previously uncollected poems in the
Out of the Blue
section first appeared:
The Guardian, The Independent, Poetry Review, The Printer’s Devil, Proof, Wading through the Deep Water
(Coychurch Press, 2000). ‘Jacob’s Drum’ and ‘Mr Lear’s Ring’ were first broadcast on
Poetry Proms
on BBC Radio 3. ‘Ice Coming’ was commissioned for the Salisbury Festival. ‘Piers Plowman: The Crucifixion and Harrowing of Hell’ was commissioned and broadcast by BBC Radio 3.
OF THE
BLUE
(2001)
Speak to me in the only language
I understand, help me to see
as you saw the enemy plane
pounce on you out of the sun:
one flash, cockling metal. Done.
Done for, they said, as he spun earthward
to the broad chalk bosom of England.
Done for and done
.
You are the pilot of this poem,
you speaks its language, thumbs-up
to the tall dome of June.
Even when you long to bail out
you’ll stay with the crate.
Done for, they said, as his leather jacket
whipped through the branches.
Done for and done
.
Where are we going and why so happy?
We ride the sky and the blue,
we are thumbs up, both of us
even though you are the owner
of that long-gone morning,
and I only write the poem.
You own that long-gone morning.
Solo, the machine-gun stitched you.
One flash did for you.
Your boots hit the ground
ploughing a fresh white scar in the downland.
They knew before they got to him,
from the way he was lying
done for, undone
.
But where are we going?
You come to me out of the blue
strolling the springy downland
done for, thumbs up, oil on your hands.