Maskwork

Gregory Leadbetter

• Publisher: Nine Arches Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781913437046
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

In Gregory Leadbetter 's second poetry collection, Maskwork, mystery, theatre and ritual combine to reveal rather than to disguise. The mask, in these resonant poems, acts as a way of becoming, seeing, and knowing – granting access to altered states and otherworlds hidden within and beyond ourselves. Here, language itself becomes an animating magic, connecting humans to our ecological roots.

The spirit of revival, renaissance, new birth and rebirth haunts this book: and at its core, the idea of poetry itself as a form of learning – an art and a mystery – runs like a quicksilver thread throughout, between the elusive and the certain. Leadbetter's meticulously attuned lyrical poetry tells of the transformative experience of knowing, a dynamic state of being that forever alters both the knower and the known.

Tree Script

...

Turn the key to the mouth
in your hand, the wand in the leaves
of your voice, grown to your ear
from the ground, to your eye from the bough
that roots in the tilth of the sky:
let these be signs that grow
with mind where mind is sown:
In flower the first	Apple
has the scent of all letters:
the fruit and drunkenness
of speech in the juice of its flesh
at the lips: the first letter
is a kiss.
Its blossom makes an Easter-month	Cherry
that dances from itself.
For birth, a conifer:	Fir
an egg of many seed-heads
balanced impossibly
on its branch.
Each branch a tree	Cedar of Lebanon
to house a heaven
and its shadow.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Epigraph
• Maskwork
• Musician
• Doe
• A Poppet
• Gramarye
• Two Lost Things
• Cara
• Labels for the Exhibition of an Hitherto Private Cabinet of Masks
• Metaphysician
• Tree Script
• Archaeopteryx
• Two Friends
• Personal Computing
• Lapse
• Apple Tree
• Optics
• The Swoops
• Found in a Wood
• Engine Pool, Earlswood Lakes
• Tuisto
• Modranect
• Solstice, Midwinter
• Sleepery
• Transhumanist Glitch
• The Ape at the End of the World
• At Porlock Salt Marsh
• Interval
• Sakadas at Delphi
• Terroir
• Beorma
• Unconscious Minister
• Dérive
• Lord of Misrule
• Europa
• A March Nest
• Second Best Bed
• Sky Burial
• Don’t Ask
• Fogou
• Mg: A Biography
• Chess Metaphysic
• Scenery
• At English Bicknor
• Daemon
• Consistori del Gai Saber
• Quest
• Notes
• Acknowledgements
• About the author and this book