Heart / Land: Poems on Love & Landscape

By Michael Gilkes

What makes Heart / Land both rewarding and challenging are the contrasting landscapes (ranging from the Guyana rainforest through Caribbean islands to the islets of the Bermuda atoll ) and the poems frank celebration of the diversity of language and life of the Caribbean / South American world.

The poems move, in a variety of poetic styles, between the threat of global disaster (Leaf, Summit) and the healing nature of landscape and love (Fall, Saint Lucy, Mother/Nature). The complex scenarios of life from childhood to adulthood and old age are all sketched within the challenging embrace of their landscapes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504947800

Michael Gilkes

Michael ( BA honours 1st class London, Ph.D Kent, Professor Emeritus university of Guyana ) is both an academic and a creative writer. He has taught at universities in the Caribbean and the United Kingdom over the past 40 years, including the University of Kent at Canterbury, the University of Warwick, the University of Guyana, the University of the West Indies (where he served as Reader in English and Head of the English department) in Barbados. He was also Quillian Visiting professor at Randolph-Macon Women’s College Lynchburg, Virginia U.S.A. (1999). He is also an actor, poet and playwright, and a director and script writer/producer in the fields of theatre and film. His published work includes Couvade: a dream-play of Guyana (1974), a double edition of Couvade and A Pleasant Career (a play on the life and work of Edgar Mittelholzer.), a critical study Wilson Harris and the Caribbean Novel (1975), a lecture series (The Literate Imagination 1989) and a critical study ( Caribbean Literature , Twayne. U.S 1981) Awards: A Pleasant Career won the Guyana Prize for Drama in 1992. Joanstown and other poems, a first collection of poetry, won the Guyana Prize for Best Book of Poetry in 2002. Michael won the Guyana Prize for Drama again in 2006 for his biographical, one-man play, The Last of the Redmen.

Book preview

AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2015 Michael Gilkes. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 09/11/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-4781-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-4780-0 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Diamond Gilkes

Permission to Land

Seawall

Mother / Nature

Swimmer

The White Box

Five toad poems

On Larkin’s ‘Aubade’

Time for Poems

Dog’s love

Loquats

Food chain

‘Colly’

Farine

Summit

Lycanthrope

Stalker

Surveyors

Leaf

Fall

Sun

Shaman

Writer

Blue

Heart / land

Song for Rima

Orphic lament

Returnee

All fall down

Braids

Morne Fortune

Saint Lucy

The Hook

A late sonnet

Acknowledgements

"the following poems have appeared previously in ‘Joanstown and other poems’ published by Peepal Tree Press Ltd. 17 King’s avenue LS6IQS, Leeds, England:

‘Swimmer’, ‘Morne Fortune’, ‘the Hook’, ‘Saint Lucy’, ‘Late Sonnet’.

The poems ‘Returnee’ and ‘Fall’ were previously published in The Arts Journal (48 Eping Avenue, Bel Air Park, Georgetown, Guyana)

Diamond Gilkes

Dawn light in the forest’s high canopy of leaves

filters down sketching in branches and trunks of trees.

Below, a creek glistens. A corial heading for the river

leaves a trail of white lace in the V of its wake.

Water falling from paddles sparkles like diamonds.

Mist clouds the river, hiding its secret life.

Outboard engine roaring, the corial slices

the water like a knife.

A small neat figure sits bolt upright

in the dead centre of the boat. Two