WPN is proud to be introducing a long line of phenomenal poets over the next few weeks, beginning with Kingston University Creative Writing MFA student, Julia Rose Lewis. Julia is not a stranger to form, often creating complicated works that rely on structure as much as content. Feel the cool rocks. Taste the salty water on your tongue. Listen to the crunch of the sand beneath your feet. All the senses are awakened as we travel to Nantucket, sitting on the rocks as the water crashes beneath us and the winter settles into our bones.
Weathering (Winter on Nantucket)
Water,
sand,
rock,
stone,
hand,
and wood.
Wood,
he works with, and always water.
To the hand,
the sand is sticky and slippery the stone.
The island is a rock,
in the sea;they live on the rock.
In the winter he sleeps, she reads, and the wood
burns down, the fire dies, cold grows the stone
and the glass of water.
She scatters his sleep like sand
by taking his hand.
He warms to her hand
standing on the rock
in the sand.
Wood turns gray from
salt water
turns rocks into stone;
punishment overturns the stone;
polished, she holds it in her hand.
Where rosa rugosa grows beside the water,
on the rock.
Where, there is wood;
his heart has turned to sand.
Sand
is made of old stone.
The stone is made of petrified wood,
it warns her hand,
gray is the water and the rock.
There is water,
sand, sandy hand,
stone, stood, would, wood,
rock, wrack, wreck, wraith, wait, waiter, water.
Julia plays around with language, repeating words and images in a way that form new meaning depending on their relation to the other words around them. This is similar to the camp of L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E Poetry, which was an avant garde movement in poetry that came to be at the end of the 1960s, drawing attention to the way that language is used in a poem and how those words create meaning. Stick with us over the next few weeks to see more wonderful poetry from an assortment of different, new voices.
