Rescued From Time

By Barbara Fisher

In this, her fourth book, Barbara Fisher addresses diverse subjects ranging from literature and art to the natural world, traveI, food, family, and narratives of colonial days and the migrant experience.

‘Barbara Fisher has a highly personal way of seizing an historicaI moment or a daily event and transforming it into a striking im

• Language: English
• Publisher: Debbie Lee
• Release date: Oct 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781760412340

Barbara Fisher

Barbara Fisher, who lives in Sydney, has worked as an illustrator, copywriter, editor, art teacher and an antiquarian bookseller. Although born in NSW, she spent part of her childhood inEngland and, later, with her architect husband returned there to live in London for several years. It was not until l995 that she focused on writing (and reading) poetry, although years earlier she had published a few memorable poems. Encouraged by her 'rediscovery' by Peter Coleman and attendance at Ron Pretty's celebrated poetry workshops at Wollongong University in 1999, she was awarded a Varuna mentorship with Kevin Brophy. Other awards have included the Bauhinia and the Grenfell Henry Lawson Prizes. In 2001 she was a finalist in the Gwen Harwood Prize and took second prize in the NSW Society of Women Writers' 2004 National Poetry Competition. In 2014 she was shortlisted for the inaugural Second Bite Poetry Competition.

Book preview

Rescued From Time

Rescued From Time

Barbara Fisher

Ginninderra Press

Contents

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

Acknowledgements

Also by Barbara Fisher

Rescued From Time

ISBN 978 1 76041 234 0

Copyright © text Barbara Fisher 2016

Cover image: Grace Cossington Smith, Door to the Garden, © Estate of Grace Cossington Smith, used by permission

Cover design: Alex Baird

---

All rights reserved. No part of this ebook may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. Requests for permission should be sent to the publisher at the address below.

---

First published 2016 by

Ginninderra Press

PO Box 3461 Port Adelaide 5015 Australia

www.ginninderrapress.com.au

in memory of John

and for Patrick and Lucy and their families

‘Art, in a sense, is life brought to a standstill, rescued from time.’

– James Salter, Burning the Days: Recollections

I

Deckchairs

---

It seems these canvas contraptions are coming back,

have been sighted in modish homewares stores,

along with designer cushions and every sort of throw.

---

Deckchairs! Those favourites of the 1930s,

supporting all those Bloomsbury bottoms

in drowsy summer gardens of the literati.

---

The famous faces look up at the camera –

Vanessa and Clive and the Woolves, Morgan,

Lytton and Carrington – from panamas,

---

early sunglasses or thatch of remarkable hair.

Because they are sitting so close to the ground

they seem vulnerable, yet how steadily

---

photographs record their confident gaze;

we guess the witticism just uttered, the laughter

dissolving in the mild, tobacco-scented air.

The Proper Spirit

---

Actors always say the clothes they wear on stage

do more than make them look the part,

they make them feel it in their flesh and bones.

So the man in doublet, hose and cloak,

puts on courtliness with every garment,

or with the weight of a long greatcoat

heavy on his shoulders, will assume gravitas

or find himself with a different step induced

by military boots and cane. He may need

to exercise an arm in the etiquette of the hat

or even know the pinch of a clerical collar

around his unaccustomed neck.

---

Women are well acquainted with the constraints

of costume – tight-laced stays, the upward push

of breasts, the tug of heavy skirts or swaying walk

occasioned by a crinoline. Or moving into drama

of the kitchen sink variety, may understand

the scrape of scalp with hair pulled into curlers,

the flattening of feet in pompommed slippers

– easy to imagine the incipience of bunions…

---

But Mr and Mrs William Blake considered clothes

in a different light. One summer afternoon the couple

were discovered sitting at ease in their garden

reading Paradise Lost. Both had taken off their clothes,

believing nakedness would encourage the proper spirit

in which to appreciate that great work.

Conversations I Do Not Have

---

For some time I have been wanting to tell a friend

she looks rather like Queen Mary.

All she needs is a toque, a long dress, pearls –

a great many of them – and a furled parasol

but I don’t say this because I don’t think she’d like it

and certainly wouldn’t approve of the Queen’s habit

of embarrassing her hosts into parting

with their prized antiques. And my friend

would take a dim view of anyone who collected Fabergé.

So that is one conversation, admittedly trivial,

which I do not have.

---

Another conversation disallowed is when I’m a guest