{"id":125,"date":"2010-06-15T16:14:47","date_gmt":"2010-06-15T04:14:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=125"},"modified":"2014-11-19T22:31:56","modified_gmt":"2014-11-19T09:31:56","slug":"tuesday-poem-ithaca-conversations%e2%80%94the-wayfarer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2010\/06\/15\/tuesday-poem-ithaca-conversations%e2%80%94the-wayfarer\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Poem: “Ithaca Conversations\u2014The Wayfarer”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I introduced the Tuesday Poem concept and blog<\/strong> <\/a>last week when I posted a poem by Sappho (6th Century BC), \u201cYou know the place: then \u2026 “<\/a> <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Tim Jones <\/strong>started the “Greek” trend on 1 June when he published Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Ulysses.<\/a> <\/strong><\/em>Today he has continued the trend by publishing my poem, Homing<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, which he first selected for publication in JAAM 26<\/strong><\/a> in 2008. As Tim notes on his blog today, Homing<\/strong><\/em> was published together with a companion poem, The Trojan Shore, <\/strong><\/em>both of which form part of a sequence I have been working on called Ithaca Conversations.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Ithaca Conversations<\/em> sequence reflects my long held love of myth and legend, a love which began when my Standard 4 teacher, Mrs Hook, placed a colourful poster of the “Twelve Olympians” on our classroom wall. I was fascinated, absorbed … and read every book about the Greek myths that I could lay my hands on. The reading process continued into adult life, with translations of Ovid<\/strong>, Homer<\/strong>, and less mythic but equally legendary stories such as Xenophon’s <\/strong>Anabasis<\/strong>, <\/em>as well as novels such as Robert Graves’<\/strong> Homer’s Daughter<\/strong>. <\/em>But the Iliad<\/em><\/strong> and the Odyssey<\/em><\/strong> were amongst my earliest loves and the power they exerted over my imagination is best evidenced by the way they continue to infiltrate my poetry and short fiction\u2014and that the novels I write are centred around epic, legend and myth, both in what is loosely our world (Thornspell<\/strong>)<\/a> <\/em>and alternate worlds (The Wall of Night Series<\/em>.<\/strong><\/a>)<\/p>\n

So I thought I’d complement Tim’s poem with another from the sequence, which also provides a slant into the Odysseus legend: This poem, The Wayfarer<\/strong><\/em>, was a finalist in the Takahe <\/strong><\/a>Poetry Competition in 2006 (judged by David Howard<\/strong>)<\/a> and published in Takahe<\/strong> 62.<\/p>\n

The Wayfarer<\/strong>: Odysseus at Dodona<\/em><\/p>\n

Acorns lie strewn with old leaves, thick
\nas years beneath the shadow of spreading oaks
\nwhere an old woman stoops, picking up sticks
\nthat are no more or less twisted than she, binding
\nthem onto her bent back, and watching with one
\nbright, blackbird eye as the wayfarer approaches,
\nan oar balanced across his knotted shoulder, his eyes
\nnarrowed between deep seams, as one who has looked
\nout to numerous horizons and seen wonders: the moon’s
\ntwinned horns rising from a twilit sea like some mythic
\nbeast, awe and terror bound into the one moment
\nof seeing \u2013 those same eyes strayed now into this land
\nof low, green hills where the margin of the world
\nis always close as the line of the next, wooded slope
\nmeeting sky, and where a crone hobbles closer
\nbeneath her load, head twisted up to see him better,
\ncurious as a crow, cackling to think there can be
\nany burden greater than hers in this world of suffering,
\nflapping work-worn hands and husking at him
\nin her cracked voice, bidding him return to the hearth
\nfire and the home isle, to sit in the sunlit porch
\nwith grandchildren clutching at his knees \u2013
\nbut the wanderer hears only the ravens cawing,
\nlifting in clouds from the sacred grove, darkening
\nthe sun with their wings, crying out that he is fated,
\ncondemned to roam across sea and land, never
\nresting or knowing ease until he comes at last
\nto some far country where salt too is a stranger
\nand no traveller has ever brought word to those
\nwho dwell there, or led them to imagine
\nthe immeasurable vastness, the restless expanse
\nof the great ocean, that is the circumference,
\nthe greater part of an unknown world.<\/p>\n

(c) Helen Lowe, 2006<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I introduced the Tuesday Poem concept and blog last week when I posted a poem by Sappho (6th Century BC), \u201cYou know the place: then \u2026 “ Tim Jones started the “Greek” trend on 1 June when he published Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Ulysses. Today he has continued the trend by publishing my poem, Homing, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27320,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions\/27320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}