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John Killick
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Poetry
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Poems & photographs from Le Moulin, Normandie 2006
Disused Quarry
Once resounding to the calls of men
and the clank of machinery,
this place was powered with purpose,
chipping away the rock-face
to establish elsewheres of
commissioned elegance.
Now nature has taken back
these acreages into its keeping,
Scribbling surfaces with lichens,
letting undergrowth spread rankly,
restoring silence as a constant,
apart from the bird-calls.
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In Noirmortier
the baby mussel brood is born
spat is settled on ropes
hung horizontally between the poles
I think of my parents
both of them stitching
a small tent of endearments
from which the flap is closed against me
in June spat is brought ashore
and laid on wooden frames
where it remains until the spring
school is like being shaken
in one of those small globes
in perpetual blizzard conditions
trapped yet out in the cold
to stop them being swept away
lengths of mesh are wound around
the buchots to hold them in place
I run away
back to the big house
its walls like a second skin
much harder, impermeable
holding the world at bay
eider ducks and tingle bore holes
in the shells, and seaweed snarls
the poles, hence the precautions
comes a well-meaning friend
sees me there on the shelf
like some neglected vase
takes me down and apart
but is quite unable
to put the pieces back together
after a year on the poles
they are harvested, cleared
from the nets, sold around the world
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Poems to paintings by Alison McGill
Conflict
In the drama being played out here
green is one of the protagonists,
but its hold on the land is tenuous.
Darker colours are gaining ground,
they are weighing down the palette.
Rock knows it has might on its side,
it has held itself together for aeons.
Why should anyone think it would let
whippersnappers of grassblades
pose a threat to its dominance?
Where is the sun to massage the soil?
Where are the showers to succour the shoots?
Rock grows ever more confident.
In the drama being played out here
It scents mastery in the air.
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Clearance
Broad straths traversed by burns
tumbling to still lochs. Or impetus lost,
in mazey rivulets sunken in sand.
But where are the people? Gone,
long gone, driven from here over
the watersheds or across the seas,
leaving landscapes tenantless,
the haunt of pewits, the hunting-
ground of eagles from their eyries.
My sight is cleansed by emptiness,
places never to be re-colonised,
their history too bitter to be borne.
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Above the Land
This is aerial reconnaissance,
vertiginous, without safety-net,
yet eye-catching and holding.
What might be tracks meld into
strata. Swarthy earth colours
dominate, stressing
the obduracy of matter.
The spirit is launched
on thermals, surrenders
to the swirl of pigment,
the birl of space.
Click here for more information about Alison McGill's work.
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The link below takes you to a new page I have recently added to my website. Please have a look!
Photography
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