Greta Stoddart

Fool


Look at your desk,
can’t you see it’s had enough
of your elbows, your head, your heart –

break it up and feed the fire
for the Fool is nothing

if not drawn to the bright spark
in all dying things

Then let the Fool in foolish dress
make awkward gestures of tenderness

Let us in this way
be entertained in all manner
of small mercies

Let us be grateful for them
and for the Fool who is nothing
if not good

for nothing is what we’re good for
nothing might be what is called for


*


Once upon a time


there was a word
that was sick of its meaning
the way it was said and said
like a wet cloth carelessly slapping a table.
What a tearjerker of a word it was.
It barely knew what it meant anymore
like it had collapsed from over-usage.
Poor old thing
who more than any other word
felt it had to be what it was
really only supposed to be about.
Why carry on
when they said it who didn’t mean it
when they meant it who didn’t say it.
It all made the word feel pretty existential about itself.
Maybe if it could stop meaning
the feeling would be set free!
But in the end it knew
that whatever it was
was made in the moment
by those who found themselves there
who found the word wanting
only to prove itself
in the silent moving air.


*


Walking into church


is like walking
into someone’s mind.

I don’t know how to think or be,
how to look in the slant light.

I’m being watched. Am I being watched.
What is being thought of me.

I want to lay myself down at the feet
of someone who might do something.

What am I saying.
Who is listening.

Only the silence
that’s been made over the years by those

who’ve come to weigh their grief in the air,
left the light thick with it.

Say it: you are not alone.
I am not alone, I say.

Won’t you take me in, old thing
or forgive me at least for I know not

what I’m doing planting a candle
in this melting glimmering tray.

    11     The Act
    13     Where to look
    15     A glass of water
    16     What is a question
    18     Perfect Field
    20     Second Nature
    22     Three tulips in a milk bottle
    24     Clay
    26     Slow Cinema
    28     Adult Education
    29     Fool
    30     How I come to clean the windows
    31     Smile
    33     Birds Britannica: Exhibition Catalogue
    36     Cold and lonely wastes
    37     Concorde
    39     The little living room
    41     School Field
    42     Remote
    44     Constellation
    46     Consider the mornings
    49     Once upon a time
    50     Untimely
    54     Walking into church
    55     Spell
    56     The long grass
    57     Performance
    58     Flowers for my ego and a dark stage
    59     The Rose Garden
    63     I wish I could be ‘fresh, honest and brave’
    64     Yesterday I planted a tree
    65     What is a tree
    66     My life came up to me and said
    68     Lie in a field on your back
 

Reviews of Alive Alive O:

‘Greta Stoddart sets transience against endurance: the certainty of human mortality against the mysteries of forbearance.’ – David Harsent, Chair of Judges, Roehampton Poetry Prize

‘Stoddart honors the ancient pulse of our art, and in doing so proves her mettle, wisdom, and craft.’ – Adam Tavel, Plume (USA)

‘Colloquial, faintly unruly, the poems travel light on adventures of consciousness, channelling the energies of a big, agnostic imagination into new forms.’ – Carol Rumens, Poetry Review

‘When not confronting life and death as we most vividly encounter them, Stoddart’s poems suggest the ways in which our mortality is ever-present in daily life… Alive Alive O is a compelling book, defiant in the face of life’s losses.’ – Ben Wilkinson, Times Literary Supplement

‘…an exploration of grief that is both pensively elegiac and electrifyingly alive…These are poems that feel necessary, and that show how poetry can be part of dealing with the great change of life and death.’ – Alex Pryce, Mslexia