They Who Saw the Deep

By Geraldine Monk

At the heart of this collection of poems is the nature of water; water as giver and taker of life, luxuriant and lethal in equal measures. It is set against the backdrop of the shipping forecast and weaves the myths and legends of the ancient Mesopotamians through a litany of migrations down the ages to the present day.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Parlor Press, LLC
• Release date: Apr 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781602358188

Geraldine Monk

Geraldine Monk’s poetry was first published in the 1970s and has appeared in countless magazines and anthologies. Her main collections include Interregnum (Creation Books) and Escafeld Hangings (West House Books). The Salt Companion to Geraldine Monk edited by Scott Thurston appeared in 2007, and in 2012 she edited the collective autobiography of selected British poets in Cusp: Recollections of Poetry in Transition (Shearman Books). She is an affiliated poet at the Centre of Poetry and Poetics at The University of Sheffield, U.K.

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Author’s Note

The heart of this book stems from a boat trip on the Libyan Sea in 2014. It was stunningly beautiful but tainted with the inescapable knowledge of the daily death toll of migrants and refugees being lost to its waters. I began to research and write about migration across the seas and down the centuries. The result is the title poem of this book where I interweave lines from ancient Mesopotamian myths.

In the summer of 2015 I was finalising the book in readiness for publication when both these strands became headline news around the world. The first was the intensifying of the refugee crises which swept through Europe and the second was the systematic destruction of the ancient sites in Iraq and Syria culminating in the beheading of the archaeologist and historian Khaled as-Asaad, the eighty-two-year-old keeper of antiquities at Palmyra.

I would therefore like to dedicate this book to the memory of all those who have lost their lives at sea whilst searching for a better life and to Khaled as-Asaad who lost his life whilst protecting the heritage of the world.

– Geraldine Monk

August 2015

How long and careworn

the wanderer must cross,

oar in hand, the rime-cold sea –

the way of outcasts Wyrd leads.

THEY WHO SAW THE DEEP

Viking. North Utsire. South Utsire.

Warning of gales.

Scandinavians.

Westerly. Cyclonic.

Carved snakes malign

horizons. Grizzled North Sea.

Petulant. Tormenting skim of

long ships. Tickling their

underbellies to within an inch.

They came for our wheat.

Wool. Honey. Women.

Tin. Mini-hammers

swinging from their necks.

Kipper ties. Kiss Me Quick

etched on their horns.

                     After one league the darkness was

                     thick and there was no

                     light. You could see nothing

                     ahead and nothing

                     behind.

I negotiate a monster cauliflower:

pyroclastic flow of the vegetable world.

How come it’s so massive?

Is it a drugs cheat? Genetically

modified? I slice distraction.

Outer space deletes light.

An unidentified smell of burning

insinuates malevolence.

I cut my finger on the surprise attack of

longing for unimaginable midsummer

polar mesospheric clouds radiating

false dawns. A pair of fitful atmospheric

doves home in through my kitchen window.

Sea of Nectar Shanty

In the first molecule in the very first molecule.

In the first droplet in the very first droplet.

In the first water in the very first water.

In the very first.

Very.

hydrogen

oxygen

sodium

chlorine

Forties. Cromarty. Forth. Tyne.

Northerly or northeasterly.

Becoming variable then becoming

southerly or southeasterly. Wintry