Status Updates From The Art of Falling

Themes and annual coverage aims:
* Poetry/Spoken word
* Love and friendship
* Nature
* Environment
* Life changes
* Love and friendship
* Conflict
* Transport
* Human connection/condition

Reading setting, atmosphere and accoutrements:
Setting: Around work holiday bits and living - lying in bed, on a train, and sofa under a soft blankie
Physical bookmark: Papergang pin badge backing paper - nature feels
Soundtrack: General life

Reason for choice timing and format:
Source: Print book purchase
Format: Print book paperback
Why now: Simple holiday fun - 3 books in 3 days for a proper crash course to the authors style

Initial inspiration: I’m a fan… of poetry and the person

This one started the same as the others,
the waiting for midnight, talking to strangers
as what's left of the year drags itself off

and we stand on the bridge as fireworks
burst silent at midnight, the tipping point
when you could fall between years

From 'New Year's Eve'

And if you saw her hiding in the air ducts of Parliament
it was only to listen to the speeches.

And if she set fire to post boxes and burnt letters,
it was only certain envelopes she put pepper in.

From 'Suffragette'

You remembered nothing of your journey,
minutes of your life deleted and only this room
to witness your passing. I can only guess

which loving object tried to catch you, which voice
pulled me from my sleep. I kick the bath. It answers
in a low familiar tone. I stamp. The floor bellows
its reply. The room beneath echoes like a drum.

From 'The Fall'

End of 2nd section, the poems of which account an abusive relationship. My heart hurts.

It doesn't feel as if ten years have passed.
I remember the bedroom window. The truck
parked and blocking all the light. I could laugh
if this thing in my chest stopped breaking. It was luck

that got me out of it. Still I want you to read these words.
I try to make you human. I pretend that I've been heard.

From 'Human'

What happened sits in my heart like a stone.
You told me I'd be writing about
it all my life, when I asked
how to stop saying these things to the moon.
I told you how writing it makes the dark
lift and then settle again like a flock of birds.

From 'How I Abandoned My Body To His Keeping'

There was a time when I was translated by violence,
there were times I prayed to be turned into a flower
or a tree, something he wouldn't recognise as me.

From 'Translation'

Because they tried to make me say your name,
the shame and blame and frame of it,
the dirty little game of it, the dark and distant
heart of it, the cannot be a part of it,
[...] the rut and fuck and muck of it,
the not-forgotten hurt of it, the syllable
stop-dead of it, the starting in the throat of it,
the ending at the teeth of it.

From 'Your Name'

I can't remember a single thing we said
to one another but I remember your

black leather jacket, your one pair
of good black trousers. I remember

arguing all night, but not what about.
I remember sleep was something

that did not belong to me. I swear
I remember nothing, just your outline

at the foot of the bed, you are shouting
as if calling me from some distant shore,

From 'Your Hands'

This is the language of insects, this body
low to the ground, this single purpose,
this living with dirt, this stop-start-stop,
this construction of fabulous structures,
this non-human logic, this cannot-live-without-
the-other, this no-good-as-a-single-entity,
this language, this language, please I cannot
meet your kind again, [...]

From 'The Language of Insects'

This is for falling which is so close to failing
or to falter or fill; as in I faltered when I heard
you were here; as in I filtered you out
of my life; as in I've had my fill of falling:
a fall from grace, a fall from God,
to fall in love or to fall through the gap,
snow fall, rain fall, falling stars,
the house falls into disrepair,
to fall in with the wrong crowd,
[...]

From 'The Art of Falling'

still I love the train, its sheer unstoppability,
its relentless pressing on, and the way the track
stretches its limb across the estuary
as the sheep eat greedily at the salty grass,
and thinking that if the sheep aren't rounded up

will they stand and let the tide come in, because
that's what sheep do, they don't save themselves,
and knowing people have drowned out there

From 'Barrow to Sheffield'

And the vacuum cleaner flew
down the stairs like a song
and the hiking boots
launched themselves
along the landing.

And one half of the house
hated the other half
and the blinds wound
themselves around
each other.

From 'In Praise of Arguing'

knowing the police cars rushing past
would be too late. The roads
that brought the gunman there
would stop them finding him —

Moore is a poet from my local area, and I clearly remember the subject of 'The Messiah, St. Bees Priory', the Cumbrian shootings of 2010. I honestly got chills from this poem, remembering the time:

when villages, hardly talked about before
were the names on everybody's lips.

for those who lift and carry
and shout and swear, for those
who can recite the lengths of boards
and tubes like a song, a psalm for them,
the ones who don't like heights
but spent their whole life hiding it,
a pslam for those who work too long,
a psalm for my father, a psalm for him.

From 'A Psalm for the Scaffolders'