Lucky Country

By Gail Holst-Warhaft

In Lucky Country, Gail Holst-Warhaft shifts her focus from Greece, where so many of her poems and other writings have been set, to Australia and to her own family. Several poems are about her father, who came from the slums of London to make his fortune in what was called, in those days, “The Lucky Country.” Others are about her great grandmother, her grandfather, and her mother. Poems set in Ithaca, New York, where she has lived for nearly forty years, reveal the poet’s love of the landscape surrounding her. The volume ends with set of poems dedicated to the memory of Holst-Warhaft’s mentor and friend, the brilliant British poet, critic, and literary biographer, Jon Stallworthy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fomite
• Release date: Sep 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781944388683

Book preview

Lucky Country

Lucky Country

Poems

Gail Holst-Warhaft

Fomite

For Zellman, Zoe, and Simon,

and in memory of Jon Stallworthy

Contents

I. Lucky Country

Lucky Country

Afghanistan, 1969

Legacy

At the Ocean’s Edge

On My Mother’s Map

The Women of Her Generation

‘Indian Curry as Made by Col. Sankey’s Black Cook’

When the Mail Comes

Flood Days

A Willing Heart

A Stray Metaphor

The Headmaster’s Secret

Reading the Sky

Drawer by Drawer

My Mother’s Garden

Touching Beethoven

Summer Storm

Looking Down on the Lucky Country

II. Grounded

Night Flight to Ithaca

Autumn in Ithaca

Weeds

Grounded

Jim Crows

Sketch for Summer

The Front Line

Winter Walk with Clouds

On the Bridge at Treman Gorge

The Lost Map

Near Field

Blowsy

Preserves

III. The Body Forgets

Naples

Bangkok Moon

Lisbon Revisited

Archaeology

Guardians

The Body Forgets

Pruning

IV. Three Poems for Jon Stallworthy (1/18/1935-11/19/2014)

A Poet’s Letters

Blenheim

Re-enactment

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Gail Holst-Warhaft

I. Lucky Country

Lucky Country

They called it a lucky country—fortunate

to be an enormous island in the South Pacific,

---

a level playing-field for some

to rise like my cockney father, a boy

---

from the East End whose accent was enough

to place him in the old country. Among descendants

---

of convicts and their keepers he could become

a gentleman. Once he took me to see

---

the London he raised me on with stories

of pockets picked and jellied eels

---

that stuck to your ribs, of pease pudding,

Music Halls and Pearlies with shiny suits

---

and how a watch pinched back an hour

after selling would earn a boy a shilling.

---

It’s gone, he said, the East End I knew,

as he stared at