Poems

• Published in: John Clare Society Journal no. 43; pp. 45 - 77
• Main Author: Haskins, Lola
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Birmingham John Clare Society 01.07.2024
• Subjects: Armed forces; Poetry

[...]because having been solo my entire writing life, I too have felt like the only soldier in my army,- second, because I share his tender feelings towards and passion for both the natural world and home; third, because his journal makes it clear how hard and confusing freedom can be; and finally because I was stimulated by the fact that that my book title, Asylum, can evoke lunacy, refuge, or both at once. In other words, I experience his changing mental states as matches, and my poems as the resulting fires, fires which I hope may sometimes burn out of control. Which was how my father came to lie on a cold steel table that night with no one to probe his nakedness for the gap through which his life had billowed like a curtain and then, like the scrim it was, disappeared. Oklawaha, Divided Between here and the Silver Run lie acres of trees drowned for the sakes of men and women who fish not for food but for trophies, who don't see the point of anything that can't be hung gape-mouthed from a hook.