Carnival Edge: New & Selected Poems

Katherine Gallagher

• Publisher: Arc Publications
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781908376954
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

Carnival Edge: New & Selected Poems is Katherine Gallagher's third book from Arc, and draws together the best work from five of her previous collections, together with a substantial body of new work.

Gallagher is a prolific and popular poet, and this comprehensive new collection will delight her many devotees, both in the UK and in her native Australia."Katherine Gallagher has an aesthetic purity which combines introspection with an outward focus... Her verse is sometimes simply beautiful, at other times tragically moving, but always technically brilliant."
Envoi "Gallagher has always been a poet of quiet observation, meditating on her experiences as a traveler or watching small domestic moments... There can be no doubt that Gallagher's poetry has become more confident and complex over time. The early poems, usually no longer than a page, meditate on an observation or a memory, while her more recent work is more ambitious."
Australian Book Review "No word is wasted in Katherine's poems; she effortlessly glides into metaphor, playful inversions and unexpected turns of thought. She has an artist's eye for colour and line, a musician's ear for rhythm, tone and key, and a poet's skill in selection of the best word."
Anna Avebury" Carnival Edge not only withstands repeated reading, it invites it. It is a work that demands that it be taken up by poets and explored, so that it can reveal its richnesses, and show further ways in which poetry can be explored... having read Carnival Edge a number of times, I can only say that these prospects excite me enormously."
The Australian Reader Katherine Gallagher is a widely-acclaimed poet with six books published as well as four chapbooks. Born in Australia, Gallagher has lived and worked in London since 1979. She has been an active force in the community, giving poetry readings, running workshops (for adults and children), judging poetry competitions, and participating in poetry festivals. Her work has been widely reviewed. Gallagher also translates from the French and her own poetry has been translated into French, German, Italian, Romanian, and Serbian. Her two previous collections are Tigers on a Silk Road and Circus-Apprentice.

This book is also available as a eBook. Buy it from Amazon here.

AFTER KANDINSKY

A SEQUENCE:

‘When you arrive at a state of shock,

the paradox of colour will balance you.’

GREY FORMS – (1922)

Seals: the beach welcomes them,

tucks them into its summits of colour,

deep palettes. Now they gather

their possibilities, unravel old terrains,

rookeries bustled with meetings, reunions –

searching for continuities, fullnesses that

instinctively, they have claimed for aeons.

It is late. They know the oceans have

darkened, that seas are warming,

turning the hours against them.

Long ago, they learned to love colour,

to pull themselves up on it as they

circled the rip and swell of waves,

believing the ocean was theirs.

IN THE BLACK SQUARE – (1923)

A rainbow creeps into shape

above a pristine hill, each breakaway field

imposing itself. The rainbow briefly

commandeers the sky, slings moments

to make you draw breath.

Towers point all-ways to new skies,

fields returned to poppies,

buttercups that sleep under the soil,

wanting to reject the plough,

turn morning inside out.

HORIZONTAL – (1924)

Chimneys, spires, half moons, lean over you

holding the idea of settlement together.

It is night and the city has put itself to bed

once more. Those who have survived

are in their shelters.

When you feel the dream slipping,

you are most endangered. Your enemies

and friends know it. If you lose your balance,

reach for the nearest horizontal.

Nothing, you tell yourself, can save you

from the war about to start.

CONTRASTING SOUNDS – (1924)

There are no players for the chessboard.

The trees too have gone, leaving a minor banquet:

dull shapes, at angles to each other: Kandinsky’s chariot

sweeping left to right – upwards

marking lines to a hushed universe.

Circles rim shades: the drums of colour

summoning your heart. The atmosphere is as calm

as can be imagined: that calm after the shearers

have been through, taking their pickings,

while black-ringed moons pitch shadows,

putting out antennae, snail-like,

for a new slide forward. They hide a residue of faith.

This is 1924, a quarter of the century folding

back on itself. War is the old solution

where the fat death reigns, a bogey

that can’t be bought off. Back to the chessboard –

people study the game. Prom...

Table of contents

• Contents
• THE EYE’S CIRCLE (1974)
• Shapes Within a Pattern
• PASSENGERS TO THE CITY (1985)
• Song for an Unborn
• Firstborn
• For Julien at Six Weeks
• At the Playground
• Distances
• The Trapeze-Artist’s First Performance
• Itinerants
• Zelda Fitzgerald Practising Ballet
• The Survivor
• Maldon, Old Mining Town
• Homecoming
• Wimmera Windscreen
• Leaving
• Getting the Electricity On
• Woman in a Tableau
• Chartres Cathedral
• The Long Reach Out of War
• Unknown Soldier
• Dividing-Line
• Domestic
• Momentums
• Passengers to the City
• The White Boat
• Concerning the Fauna
• Night in the Suburbs
• Kandinsky Journey
• The Magic of Hands
• November, Bois De Vincennes
• Lost
• FISH-RINGS ON WATER (1989)
• International
• Firstborn
• A Girl’s Head
• Nettie Palmer to Frank Wilmot (‘Furnley Maurice’)
• Eastville, 1939
• Relic
• Ghosts
• Plane-Journey Momentums
• Art Class on Observatory Hill, Sydney
• Near Keith, South Australia
• Scene on the Loire
• To Joe: in Memoriam
• Homecoming
• Alone on a Beach
• First Time
• The Affair
• Lines for an Ex
• Poem for the Executioners
• Political Prisoners
• After Käthe Kollwitz – ‘The Face of War’
• Girl Teasing Cat With Mouse
• Tree-Planting at Alexandra Park
• TIGERS ON THE SILK ROAD (2000)
• 1969
• In Memoriam for My Brother
• Dancing
• Jet Lag
• Frost Country
• 1942
• River Murray Reunion
• My Mother’s Garden
• The Gondola at Santa Maria Dei Miracoli, Venice
• Poem for a Shallot
• Reckoning
• The Ash Tree
• Thirteen
• Knebworth Park
• A Visit to the War Memorial, Canberra
• Slippage
• The Lines on Her Palm
• Hunger
• Poinsettias
• CIRCUS-APPRENTICE (2006)
• Entente
• Laanecoorie
• The Year of the Tree
• Hedge
• Summer Odyssey
• From the Sahel
• Winter Hyacinths
• Hybrid
• Thinking of My Mother on the Anniversary of Her Death
• Gwen John Swims the Channel
• Circus-Apprentice
• Keeper
• GM Scientist
• Tanka for a Hero
• Priests
• Girl on a Bolting Horse
• Nomad
• On the Pass from Kathmandu
• At Delphi
• Love Cinquains
• The Lesson
• Dancing on the Farm
• The Last War
• Itinerant
• Cloud-Eye
• After Kandinsky
• NEW POEMS
• Biodiversity
• Seeing the Hand
• Take-Off
• Fledgling
• The Dance
• La Fleuraison
• South Beach
• Manifesto
• Nostalgia Sonnet
• The Wild Colonial Boys
• Au Pays de la Somme
• Common Grounds
• The View
• Genealogy
• Soundings
• Snow-Fire
• Biographical Note