Half-Life

By Michael Hulse

Half-Life is a riveting new collection full of family dramas, global warming and conversations with Death. The poems swing between Mexico City, New York, the Peloponnese, a Staffordshire village and home, engaging with the various beauties to be found in art, nature and the church. Then, in an extended sequence, Death relates stories of her encounters with the world's peoples and cultures.
"He writes with a controlled passion... using sophisticated effects to locate the significant and develop its larger emotional truth."

John Levett
"Compelling and moving."
Poetry Review on The Secret History
Michael Hulse was born in 1955 in England, and lived for 25 years in Germany before returning in 2002 to teach at the University of Warwick. His poetry has won the National Poetry Competition and the Bridport Poetry Prize (twice), as well as Eric Gregory and Cholmondeley Awards. His most publications are the poetry collection The Secret History (Arc, 2009) and a translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Penguin Classics, 2009). He co-edited The New Poetry, the bestselling Bloodaxe anthology and GCSE set text (1993), and the Ebury anthology The 20th Century in Poetry (2011). He lives in Stafford.
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• Language: English
• Publisher: Arc Publications
• Release date: Aug 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781908376213

Book preview

Half-Life

Published by Arc Publications

Nanholme Mill, Shaw Wood Road

Todmorden OL14 6DA, UK

www.arcpublications.co.uk

Copyright © Michael Hulse 2013

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Copyright in the present edition © Arc Publications 2013

Design by Tony Ward

Printed in Great Britain by the MPG Book Group,

Bodmin and King’s Lynn

978 1908376 19 0 (pbk)

978 1908376 20 6 (hbk)

978 1908376 21 3 (ebook)

Cover image: ‘Gethsemane’ © Tony Ward, 2011

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

Poems in this book have been published in the Irish Times, Istanbul Review, Kenyon Review, London Magazine, London Review of Books, Poetry Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Sport, Yale Review and The King’s Lynn Silver Folio: Poems for Tony Ellis.

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part of this book may take place without the written permission of Arc Publications.

Editor for the UK & Ireland:

John W. Clarke

Half-Life

Michael Hulse

Arc.TIF

2013

This book is for Kathrin and Agnes

I’ve loved it all my life,

the smell of baking bread,

and now it fills the house

as my daughter, all of two,

eagerly helps her mother

and proudly tells her father,

Agnes bake it.

We break the pith and crust

and raise a glass of wine

and talk of what we have done

and what we hope to do

and all of us together

humbly tell the father,

Homo fecit.

Contents

I

Freeman

II

The Return

The Syrian Bride

A Carcass

In Sant’ Antonio di Padua

Saskatoon

Home

Burj Khalifa

Lagerfeld

Wewelsfleth

In the Peloponnese

After the Warming

From the Virtual Jerusalem

Swiss National Day in Lavigny

Rousseau in Staffordshire

To Thine Own Self Be True

Arse over Tip

Quod Scripsi Scripsi

A Virgin in Mexico City

The Half-Life of Jesus

The Swallows

Eh, Tom?

III

Foreknowledge Absolute

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

IV

The Truth of Fiction (I)

The Truth of Fiction (II)

Author’s Note

Biographical Note

I

Freeman

Freeman pulled over on the West Gate Bridge, in heavy traffic, says my friend,

with his kids in the back, the little girl, the boys,

and he walked round the car and pulled open the door

and he took out his four-year-old daughter

and lifted her and threw her off the bridge.

When he opened the door, did he hold out a hand, and speak to her reassuringly,

and smile as a father smiles when he knows there is nothing to be afraid of,

and take her, calmly, with death in his heart, and raise her, calmly, as any father

might, let’s say, when his daughter dares the slide, alone, for the very first time,

when six feet are still the Empire State – calmly, teaching her trust?

You have to imagine it, says my friend –

the whole of it happens in full view

of six lanes of