Exposures: New and Selected Poems
di Michael G.R. Tolkien
Redbeck Press, 2003, pp. 84
Firmato dall’autore
Brossura
Raccolte di poesie di Michael G.R.
Tolkien, figlio di Michael H.R. e nipote di J.R.R. Tolkien, autografato.
Michael George Reuel Tolkien,
docente, scrittore e poeta è nato a Birmingham l’11 gennaio 1943, da Joan
Griffiths e Michael Hilary Reuel Tolkien, secondogenito del professor
J.R.R.Tolkien. Michael G.R. è il primo nipote dell’autore del Signore degli Anelli e, tra nonno e
nipote, vi è stato un rapporto speciale così emerge dalla corposa
corrispondenza tra i due fino al 1973 e che è possibile leggere nel volume di
Christina Scull e Wayne G. Hammond The
J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology (HarperCollins)
così come nelle Lettere curato da Humphrey Carpenter (Bompiani) – e dai
racconti dello stesso Michael G.R.
I ricordi del nonno, si posso
leggere qui:
based on a public talk* requested by The Leicester Writers' Club at College
of Adult Education, Wellington Street - October 19th, 1995.
This essay took shape from two linked occasions:
1.) A talk and discussion in ‘an evening of fantasy’ shared with the
novelist Graham Joyce at the Leicester Adult Education College: 21st Oct.,1997.
2.) A lecture on Tolkien’s Fantasy given at the Swanwick 50th Writers’
Summer School in Derbyshire: 11th Aug.,1998.
Address given to The Tolkien Society at the A.G.M. dinner - Birmingham.
April, 1998.
Themes and emphases in JRR Tolkien’s Essay on Fairy Stories related to Michael
Tolkien’s tale, Rainbow.
Lecture given at The Tolkien Society’s Return of the Ring Celebration: Loughborough
University: August 2012 (Uncut version with appendices
Questo libro va a unirsi agli
altri libri appartenuti e firmati da M.G.R: The
Gay Galliard di Margaret Irwin, The Winter’s Tale di William
Shakespeare e ai suoi libri di poesia No Time for Roses e Outstripping Gravity.
Libri che trovano posto nella mia
biblioteca accanto ad altri appartenuti e firmati da membri della famiglia
Tolkien: a Tolkien padre (lettere del 1926,
e 1973,
e una lettera con libro del 1970),
ai figli Michael H.R. (Le
avventure di Tom Bombadil, Leo
VI’s Concept of Divine Monarchy.
Illustrated
in a Cave Chapel, e A
History of the Greek World 323-146 B.C.) Priscilla (The
Garden di Sackville-West) e John F.R. (The
Church in the Christian Roman Empire, 2 voll.) e un segnalibro che
la sorella di Michael G.R., regala a suo padre M.H.R. nel 1962.
Dal sito dell'autore
Exposures asks by means of various protagonists: to what degree and
quality of light do we expose our experience of joy, fulfilment, loss or
confusion? A theme underlies each of the four parts: how we relate; ways of
shoring up identity; means of self-expression; searching for more than meets
the eye. All end on a positive and challenging note. As in Outstripping Gravity
anticipations and flashbacks provide a kind of 'narrative' coherence.
Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of some of these poems have appeared in: Agenda, Envoi,
Leicester Poetry Soc. Anthologies'98 , Fatchance, Other Poetry, Seam, Stanza
(Leicester Poetry Soc. journal), Staple, Tears in the Fence, The Interpreter's
House, The Rialto.
Thanks are due to John Lucas at Shoestring Press for permission to
incorporate or adapt sixteen poems from their finely presented booklet Reaching
for a Stranger.
The author is especially grateful to John Forth and Robert Hamberger for
their comments on many points of detail and arrangement. He also wishes to thank
other members of a workshop group crucial in sustaining his belief in writing
since 1994: Allan Baker, Amanda Dalton, Katie Daniels, Mark Goodwin, Helen
Johnson, Chris Jones, Marion Mathieu and Pam Thomson.
The cover illustration is from an original woodcut by Edward Walters
(1899-1978), printed in 1937 at his press at Primrose Hill, London.
Epigraph
' Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.'
(Jonathan Swift: Thoughts, 1711)
EXPOSURES
You were right to be stunned
by losing the spruce:
a thirty foot tail the northerly gale
blasted from its spine and flattened
over a wall, just wide of owners
who'd stripped away shallow
roots that nestled too near.
It stood for your eleven years,
sun-tinged, billowing
behind Guy Fawkes fires,
sheltering under its elbows
dens you thatched with plant
straws and sycamore sticks.
Now the red-brick superstore's
an open wound, and my neighbour's
sighing about lost roses
and the going rate of dried juniper.
I tell him it's spruce.
He agrees: So much tidier!
I'm dreading chain saws,
the burnt tree-flesh smell,
men happy as harpooners
gutting a whale.
(p. 43)
