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___Festival 2018________Europe_Inside_/_Outside________Vienna 24_10 | Munich 26-28_10

Zoë Skoulding
(Wales)
Friday, 26. October, 18 pm
whiteBOX Munich

Zoë Skoulding, Lyrikerin, Kritikerin und Übersetzerin,lebt auf der insel Anglese.

Zu ihren letzten Gedichtsammlungen gehört The Museum of Disappearing Sounds, Seren, 2013, und Teint: For the Bièvre, Hafan Books 2016. Sie ist Reader an der School of English Literature an der Bangor University in North Wales und bekam 2018 den Cholmondeley Award from Society of Authors für ihr Gesamtwerk und ihren Beitrag zur Lyrik.

Zoë Skoulding, poet, critic and translator. She lives on the island of Anglese.
Her recent collections of poetry include The Museum of Disappearing Sounds, Seren, 2013, and Teint: For the Bièvre, Hafan Books 2016.

She is Reader in the School of English Literature at Bangor University in North Wales and received the Cholmondeley Award from Society of Authors in 2018 for her body of work and contribution to poetry.

From Remains of a Future City (Seren, 2009)

You Will Live in Your Own Cathedral

The cathedral of sand is a storm
trickling through fingers, loose between roots,
or a single grit in the eye.

The cathedral of trees is built of mottled wings
and daubs of light on trunks or the carved
names of lovers surviving love.

The cathedral of letters trembles at the edges
of paper curling and yellowing
under the force of gravity or promises.

The cathedral of words is buttressed
against the pressure of lips falling open
on air caught in a windpipe.

The cathedral of winds whispers
through airwaves, cables or repeated loops
in the pitch glissando of speech.
 
The cathedral of books is on fire, its tongues
rushing into wind as charred pages
sweep up to settle in the dark, like snow.

The cathedral of glass is misted over
by the scratch of voices wearing it to sand.

The Building Constructed from its Own Fall

Our feet drag with the effort of
holding it all up. Or is this

weight the way it holds us
down? It begins with an echo,

then a footprint in rubble,
dust gathered into clouds

that churn into a storm
before the ground unsettles,

loose bricks flying up
in the repulsion of forces –

upper storeys rocket
from billows of cement

bound in the blast as walls
heave themselves together,

steel unbuckles, cracks
in the concrete disappear.

Hard to say whether this is
destruction or creation

as the building rises to a tremor,
the shape of itself shifting

into true, the core straight
above its foundation –

a split second of balance
before the fuse lit in a place
that used to be the future.