Bordeaux Bay

Bordeaux Bay
Bordeaux Bay by Guernsey-based artist Tony Taylor

Tuesday 10 October 2017

ORTA OCTOBER


This month the annual Poetry On The Lake Festival took place in the beautiful setting of Lake Orta in northern Italy. 

The festival was founded in 2001 by poet, Gabriel Griffin, and has as its Patron the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, who described it as
‘ ... perhaps the smallest but possibly the most perfect poetry festival in the world”.  


I don't have Ms. Duffy's wide knowledge of poetry festivals but I'd certainly agree that the Poetry On The Lake Festival is as close to perfection as I can imagine.

A few years ago, I had the good fortune to attend the events there with my wife, Jane, who had been invited to Orta to read her acclaimed poem, Il Mio Pavone Bianco.
On the final day of the Festival I took part in an outdoor poetry reading on the wooded hillside at Sacro Monte along with a number of acclaimed British and Italian poets, including the Poet Laureate herself.
This poem, Suitcases, is one that I read on that occasion. 



SUITCASES

Crouching in attic gloom, 
where skylight beams 
illuminate their pool of silver dust, 
old leather suitcases doze like alligators 
dreaming their prehistoric dreams.

They sleep soundly having eaten up my father’s life ...

the photographs, the hearing aid and collar studs, 
the safety razor with its rusted blade, 
the letters and the wallet with the ticket stubs

... yet I am so afraid 
that when I kneel beneath the skylight 
to prise apart those sagging, alligator jaws,

the life that I will find compressed within 
will be too small to match 
my memories of him.




3 comments:

  1. I really like this poem very much, Richard, especially your last stanza; but then your opening verse, I can see the relationship between suitcases and alligators...
    Poetry on the Lake Festival looks beautiful and what a place to have the festival.

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  2. This is a superb poem Richard, It really captures the feelings associated with loss and memories of a loved one. I particularly liked the reference to suitcases dozing like alligators.

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  3. Thanks Julian and John. Perhaps we Guernsey writers should consider a trip to Lake Orta for the festival one day? Who knows, maybe the Guernsey Arts Commission might even subsidise our travelling costs.

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