{"id":1138,"date":"2017-06-13T09:44:49","date_gmt":"2017-06-13T08:44:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wayleavepress.co.uk\/?p=1138"},"modified":"2017-06-13T09:45:48","modified_gmt":"2017-06-13T08:45:48","slug":"1138","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wayleavepress.co.uk\/?p=1138","title":{"rendered":"Editor’s Choice 9"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Martyn Halsall has been described as having \u2018a great gift for language that is both allusive and elegant\u2019. The poems in Coronach<\/em> are distinctive and atmospheric, largely focusing on the landscape of the north west, both of Scotland and England. However, a poem I\u2019ve always been particularly taken by is about Iceland, or at least about a painting of Iceland.<\/p>\n

Migrating Birds
\n<\/strong>(from a painting by Eirikur Smith<\/em>)<\/p>\n

Imagine you are the woman pictured at the end
\nof the lava track, at the aftermath of Iceland,
\nher gaze hardened with glacier lines, her outlook
\nshingle, back-lit by an open wound of sunset.<\/p>\n

Last light catches the ribbing down her hut,
\ncream corrugated iron, sanded rust;
\nsomething of a splintering in the concrete cast,
\nsteps leading up beyond sand\u2019s overlap;
\nthe beach spread to the emptiness of ocean.<\/p>\n

Suppose you had just returned there, and you shared
\nrealisations in the night map of her face,
\nher vision of year ending; deepening sky overcast
\nspreading its blue dyes further through calm tide;
\na shaken pepper pot flock moving away,
\nsouth, into migration.
\nConsider the painter\u2019s hand
\nleaving her to winter, having prepared the storm
\nby layering thunder through eclipsing oils.<\/p>\n

He might glance back, regret abandoning her there,
\nturning from the sea, that last flock now far out.
\nImagine, instead, he stayed; stood waiting with her.<\/p>\n

What I enjoy so much about this is the atmospheric description. It\u2019s based on a painting, but actually creates its own separate sense of a particular place by describing elements in the flat plane of the picture so as to evoke in my mind somewhere three dimensional and emotionally vibrant.<\/p>\n

The first stanza, which invites the reader to imagine being the figure in the picture, has \u2018the aftermath of Iceland\u2019 and \u2018an open wound of sunset\u2019 which sets a certain ominous tone. This is followed in the next stanza by more vivid description, doing with words what an artist does with paint before, in the third stanza, placing \u2018you\u2019 the reader more firmly there in \u2018her vision of year ending\u2019.<\/p>\n

When I\u2019m asked to \u2018Consider the painter\u2019s hand\u2019, this takes me out of the picture and into the person of the artist and the paradox of creativity, being immersed in the created object yet separate from it. All summed up in that beautiful last stanza in which loneliness, separation and regret intermingle.<\/p>\n

This seems to me to be a poem with many layers of meaning, itself a metaphor I can enter and explore both emotionally and cerebrally.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Martyn Halsall has been described as having \u2018a great gift for language that is both allusive and elegant\u2019. The poems in Coronach are distinctive and atmospheric, largely focusing on the landscape of the north west, both of Scotland and England. However, a poem I\u2019ve always been particularly taken by is about Iceland, or at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s5v6l4-1138","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wayleavepress.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wayleavepress.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wayleavepress.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wayleavepress.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wayleavepress.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wayleavepress.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wayleavepress.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wayleavepress.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wayleavepress.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}