Sinking Lessons

By Philip Armstrong

The poems in Sinking Lessons portray the vitality of a world full of things and beings we too often disregard, using language that vibrates in harmony with the lively tales it tells—from small, everyday events to stories of shipwrecks and strandings, resurrections and reanimations, arctic adventures and descents into the underworld. The cast of characters includes members of the poet's family alongside heroes from myth and literature, such as Orpheus, Scheherazade, and Frankenstein's Creature. And crowding in upon these, at all times, a multitude of non-human protagonists: sun and stars, wind and water, mud and sand, body fluids, decaying matter, chemicals organic and inorganic, and a great many fishes and birds and beasts. Sinking Lessons is the first collection of poetry from Philip Armstrong, winner of the 2019 Kathleen Grattan Poetry Award.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Otago University Press
• Release date: Jul 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781990048159

Book preview

A Horizontal Light

You’re following the track across

the eastern slope above the town, just

like you do most days. The sun’s about

to drop below the northwest hills.

It shines a horizontal light upon

the grass bank at your side and casts

the life-sized shadows of a man with

an old dog. Next moment, from behind,

the shadow of a younger dog comes racing

through the others and away. And that’s

the whole of it, right there, or else

as near as you can get to it, and gone

more swiftly than a man walks, dog runs,

sun sets, shadows follow over grass.

Portolan

Sinker

Memory’s a gulf of dim green water, deeper

than you think, but there are islands

charged with sunlight and cicadas. Here’s a bay

where boats lie anchored, all at different angles.

A boy’s feet hang over the side. In the water

he can see his soles. His fingers bait a hook

with flour and water paste. The dowel turns in his hand,

the sinker takes the line down, dimming

as the water thickens, layer on layer like paint.

He’s never caught a thing before, but now by fluke

he tugs his end as something tugs below.

A little fish comes up, a sprat, a splinter

shining in the sun. Water and blood run

where the hook comes out above one eye.

Transfixed, he keeps it dangling, calls out

for his dad who comes and slips the hook

back in behind the eye and out the mouth

and drops the fish into the layered green,

deftly reversing time. What will happen?

asks the boy. The man says They