Entries On Light

by Mimi Khalvati

Entries on Light, Mimi Khalvati's third book, is a single poem, a series of meditations on light, on what light is and does, how—as it changes—it invents and reinvents the things we see, are and were, how it inscribes our shadows and our feelings. The sea- and sky-scapes of these poems are vivid: dawn, storm, dusk, the pewtery or the bright mid-day. Each demands a different syntax, a distinctive rhythm and rhyme. Mimi Khalvati has always had a well-trained eye; she is also formally among the most resourceful poets writing today, able to close her lyrical moments with resonance and, when necessary, to leave a stanza open to the changes of the weather. If at times we think of Constable in the billowing movement of her fuller stanzas, we also—in short-phrased sections—are put in mind of the flat skies of Hokusai. She is a poet in whose vision east and west join.

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Mimi Khalvati was born in Tehran, Iran. She grew up on the Isle of Wight, where she attended boarding school from the age of six, and has lived most of her life in England. She trained at Drama Centre London and has worked as an actor and director in the UK and Iran.

She has published eight collections of poetry with Carcanet Press, including The Weather Wheel, The Meanest Flower, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, a Financial Times Book of the Year, and shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and, most recently, Child: New and Selected Poems 1991-2011, a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. Her work has been translated into nine languages and she received a Cholmondeley Award in 2006. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Mimi is the founder of The Poetry School and was the Coordinator from 1997–2004. She is a core tutor for the School and has co-edited its three anthologies of new writing published by Enitharmon Press.

She is also a freelance poetry tutor and has worked with arts organisations such as the Arvon Foundation and the South Bank Centre and has taught at universities in the UK, Europe and America.

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everywhere you see her, who could have been
Monet's woman with a parasol
who's no woman at all but an excuse for wind –
passage of light-and-shade we know
wind by – just as his pond was no pond
but a globe at his feet turning to show
how the liquid, dry, go topsy-turvy, how far
sky goes down in water. Like iris, agapanthus
waterplants from margins where, tethered
by their cloudy roots, clouds grow underwater
and lily-floes, like landing craft, hover
waiting for departure, she comes at a slant
to crosswinds, currents, against shoals of sunlight
set adrift, loans you her reflection.
I saw her the other day I don't know where
at a tangent to some evening, to a sadness
she never shares. She wavers, like recognition.
Something of yours goes through her, something
of hers escapes. To hillbrows, meadows
where green jumps into her skirt, hatbrim shadows
blind her. To coast, wind at her heels, on diagonals
as the minute hand on the hour, the hour
on the wheel of sunshades. Everywhere you see her.
On beaches, bramble paths, terraces of Edwardian
hotels. In antique shops, running her thumb along
napworn velvet. A nail buffer. An owl brooch
with two black eyes of onyx. Eyes she fingers.
But usually on a slope. Coming your way.

[PrettyFlamingo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have had this book in my attic for over 20 years and came across it when having a clear out this week. So, I thought, it is about time I read it. At first reading it reminded me of The Four Quartets in style. At first. I must confess to getting lost in it and not necessarily engaging. Although this section resonated with me:

Do you long
to go back to that childhood .... in a grown up body ...

Perhaps I would, and have a comforting chat with my younger self.