Laura Jan Shore

 

2011

 
Books : Workshops : Readings
"Don't ask yourself what the world needs . . . ask yourself what makes you alive because what the world needs are people who have come alive."    --Rainier Maria Rilke
Why Poetry? Sometimes all that’s retained is a gleam, ruby beads after the accident. Sometimes it’s the stumbling grope of lamentation. To name can be the sole claim. A basket of language gathered for comfort. A waterfall, it strokes the ear drum, drenches the heart. Peculiar utterances, sweet interruptions. The urgency to distil a rose into perfumed air. A saffron kite launched in a hurricane. Outside the prison in Leningrad, Akhmatova being asked, Can you describe this? The smoke of peat impressed in fresh print. Quest for precision, a spur to rejig the puzzle. The hiss and spit that fuse humanity. Why Poetry? won first prize in the 2006 C.J.Dennis “Open Poetry” Literary Award. It was first published in Famous Reporter 34, Dec. 2006


Why Poetry?


Sometimes all that’s retained is a gleam,

ruby beads after the accident.


Sometimes it’s the stumbling grope

of lamentation.


To name can be

the sole claim.


A basket of language

gathered for comfort.                        


A waterfall,

                it strokes the ear drum,

drenches the heart.


Peculiar utterances,

sweet interruptions.


The urgency to distil a rose

into perfumed air.


A saffron kite

launched in a hurricane.


Outside the prison in Leningrad,

Akhmatova being asked,

Can you describe this?


The smoke of peat

impressed in fresh print.


Quest for precision,

a spur to rejig the puzzle.


The hiss and spit

that fuse humanity.






Why Poetry? won first prize in the 2006  C.J.Dennis “Open Poetry” Literary Award.  It was first published in Famous Reporter 34, Dec. 2006 

as published in Water over Stone, Interactive Press 2011


Laura Jan Shore




Watch footage from the LAUNCH in Brunswick Heads with guitarist, Mark Heazlett.