The Built Moment

by Lavinia Greenlaw

Lavinia Greenlaw's latest collection, The Casual Perfect (2011), focused on 'the achievement of the provisional'. In the near decade since writing those poems, she has found herself exploring what we build out of the beginnings and endings, arrivals and departures, and the moments we fix as memories, fixing too their joy and pain. The Built Moment is divided into two sections. The first, 'The Sea is an Edge and an Ending', is a sequence of poems about her father's disappearance into Alzheimer's. It is not a narrative of illness so much as a meditation on the metaphysics of memory loss. What does it mean only to exist in the present, for your sense of self to come loose and for the past to float free? The second half of the book is called 'The Bluebell Horizontal'. If the first section is about loss (the verticals), this section is about possibility (the horizontals). It includes a prayer ('Men I Have Heard in the Night'), a blessing ('Fleur de Sel') and a speculation on why we cling on to pain ('The Break'). There are poems about Joy Division and David Bowie, and an elegy for first love. There are structures that arrest remembering and forgetting - monoliths and oubliettes - and the fundamental arrest of a poet's difficulty with words. These poems are about what we make and hold onto and offer one another. They are also about how, as we get older and death becomes more and more a part of life, what we build and what we break out of becomes more important than ever.

Genres: Poetry

68 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 5, 2019

Reviews

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poems about Greenlaw’s father and his dementia were beautiful and stark, filled with such vivid imagery. Some of the later poems, about varied subjects, did not appeal to me as much.

[Dana Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A moving collection about Greenlaw’s father’s dementia and the grief that follows after a loved one’s death.
The first part is so personal that it feels intrusive somehow to discuss it for too long. It was beautiful, put simply. There was a timeless sense to it which mirrored her father’s own understanding of the world, and the anticipation of his “leaving” is painfully sad.
The second part, while not quite as solid as the first, is still phenomenal. It has an almost metaphysical feel to it, and her grief resounds through it all.

My personal favourites are “My father’s loss of feeling”, “The break”, “Flowers for G.T.”, “The built moment” and “Men I have heard in the night.”

Overall, this was a beautiful collection. While most of my favourite poems come from the second half, the first half works much more strongly as a group of poems telling a story.

[Miles Edwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this collection three times over the last week to cement and confirm my thoughts on this book. The poems (particularly those of the first half) are so personal it feels in poor taste to even critique it, positively or negatively. Greenlaw illustrates her father’s dementia, and captures a fading quality in her poems. Most are very brief, and I couldn’t detect whether they were told in a linear sequence or dabbled in a strange in-between stage that felt timeless and endless simultaneously, which I think summarises illnesses like dementia perfectly. There were some truly beautiful moments in this collection that moved me to tears but I wasn’t blown away by it. This book feels like something Greenlaw needed to write to comprehend her grief and make sense of it, which doesn’t necessarily make it a great read. I liked a lot of the poems but I loved few of them.

He is saying: I am unclosed, I am going up in smoke,
I am freezing over.
I tell him I am saving him as quickly as I can.

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

There's a kind of cavity in the corpus of Poetry of Mourning which is the dementia-poem. Nobody has a great time in here but it's very present & I think this is a lovely piece in the canon - which is then interrupted by Actual Mourning if we can say so much -- dementia-poem as pre-mourning or mourning the present-tense event.

Excellent title poem.

A trace of violet on the tongue.
So delicate a recognition of true nature
as unclear and soluble and free.

Heaven is loved ones rising
out of the sun and walking with me
into the sea.

[Sophie (RedheadReading) · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of these that are focused on her father's dementia are incredibly raw and emotional, plus they feed into each other in a way that feels very cohesive. Whilst the latter half has less cohesion, it had more poems I could connect to personally. My favourites were Yellow, Lichen and Men I Have Heard In The Night.

[steph · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

In this collection, Lavinia Greenlaw chronicles her father's progressing dementia in the first section, The Sea Is an Edge and an Ending. The second section – The Bluebell Horizontal – is about dealing with loss. The first section was strongest for me because it felt so cohesive and her emotions about the impending loss were so strong. The second section wasn't as much of a fave for me, but I think I could appreciate the poems more on a reread. My favourite poem was the opening one, also titled 'The sea is an edge and an ending'.

Some favourite lines:
–"My father has lost his way out of the present." (the opening line of 'The sea is an edge and an ending')
–"Is this the easiest way to let go? / Not to do it yourself but to pass the act on? (from 'His gifts')
–"He has never felt as present / as he does now that the place is empty." (from 'His home comes apart at the touch')
–"He peers at me and the space between us extends itself // so that I am where he wants me, out there in the dark / in a place without stars or fathers" (from "My father tells me to wait")
–"What of you did they have to unbuild / in order to restore the idea of a heart / as either empty or full?" (from 'Pyroxene')

[Mark Friend · Rating 5 out of 5]

My father has lost his way out of the present.
Something is stopping him leaving, nothing becomes
the immediate past.’

Lavinia Greenlaw’s The Built Moment is a beauty and moving poetry collection, divided into two distinct sections.

The sea is an edge and an ending - the first section - is written with such clarity and simplicity that the 24 pieces almost flow together as parts of a single poem. They are built around the motif of her father’s journey into his lost of memory, time and identity.

The second part - The Bluebell Horizontal - is more expansive and nuanced in ambition, but still certainly deserves our time and close attention. Unlike this first section, these poems will need more time and space to resonate for the reader. I suggest re- reading these poems slowly and leaving space before moving into the next one.

Just a few of the poems in the second section that really grab my attention were: The break, The build moment, Slowly and from within, A time when work was visible, Men I’ve heard in the night, and A difficulty with words.

[Richard Sanderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quietly devastating. Full of extraordinary striking images.

[Simon Slidders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning. The dissolution of time in the first section and the understanding of space in the second both amazing .

[Jayant Kashyap · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Because the I must be on intimate terms with itself in order to undress itself”

A truly beautiful book on grief of losing someone. I keep going back to this one.

[Víctor Bermúdez · Rating 3 out of 5]

ABSENCE
To which nothing must adjust

[Charlie Beaumont · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very moving collection, specifically the poems exploring her relationship with her father and their shared experiences of his dementia. As a poet she feels so genuine and full of integrity. I am so taken by her writing and by her as a person whenever I listen to her being interviewed.