{"id":22768,"date":"2013-10-15T06:30:10","date_gmt":"2013-10-14T17:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=22768"},"modified":"2013-10-13T19:12:44","modified_gmt":"2013-10-13T06:12:44","slug":"tuesday-poem-breath-by-sarah-broom-1972-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2013\/10\/15\/tuesday-poem-breath-by-sarah-broom-1972-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Poem: “breath” by Sarah Broom, 1972 – 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

breath<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n

I am trying to breathe
\nlike the slow, low purr of a drowsy cat
\nlike the languid sway of an empty swing
\nlike the shiver of a thistle in the wind<\/p>\n

like someone about to stop breathing entirely<\/p>\n

I look for that place
\nwhere breath becomes so light it vanishes,
\npulls away like a small plane turning steeply
\nand heading up, straight up,
\nfishbone thin in a thin blue sky<\/p>\n

then gone
\n.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Sarah Broom, 1972 – 2013<\/p>\n

Published in Gleam<\/strong><\/em>, Auckland University Press, 2013<\/p>\n

Reproduced here with permission.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>About The Poem:<\/h3>\n

Sarah Broom’s posthumous collection Gleam<\/em><\/strong> was published in August of this year, three months after Sarah’s death in April. I posted my personal eulogy for Sarah here<\/a> — and said at that time how much I was looking forward to reading Gleam<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I have since had that very great joy, in reading the poetry, and sorrow, for loss of the poet. To sum up the collection, I can do no better than quote Selina Guinness’s obituary for Carcanet, Sarah’s UK publisher:\u00a0 “<\/em>Gleam … is a collection written <\/em>in extremis, and contains some of the most beautiful and startling poems about dying I have ever read.”<\/em><\/p>\n

So I am honoured to feature one of my favourite poems from the collection, breath<\/em>, with you today. I feel it is particularly poignant because Sarah was being treated for lung cancer* throughout the the writing of the collection and breath<\/em> is possibly the poem that speaks most directly to her illness. Despite the use of repetition and layering of simile and image:<\/p>\n

“like the slow, low purr of a drowsy cat<\/em>
\nlike the languid sway of an empty swing<\/em>
\nlike the shiver of a thistle in the wind”<\/em><\/p>\n

the poem is emotionally spare, even remote, like that:<\/p>\n

“small plane turning steeply<\/em>
\nand heading up, straight up,<\/em>
\nfishbone thin in a thin blue sky<\/em><\/p>\n

then gone”<\/em><\/p>\n

acquiring considerable power through the juxtaposition.<\/p>\n

I hope you will both enjoy the poem and feel what Glenn Colquhoun would call its “ache<\/a>“, as I did on first encountering it when reading Gleam<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

* For those who might feel inclined to be judgmental, I note that Sarah never smoked.<\/pre>\n
—
\n.<\/span><\/p>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Sarah Broom<\/p><\/div>\n
About The Poet:<\/h3>\n
Sarah Broom\u2019s first poetry collection, Tigers at Awhitu<\/strong>, was published by Auckland University Press (AUP) in 2010, and simultaneously by Carcanet Press in the UK.\u00a0 She has also written Contemporary British and Irish Poetry: An Introduction<\/strong>, which was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2006.\u00a0 Her second collection, Gleam<\/strong>, was published by Auckland University Press in August 2013. To hear Sarah read from and discuss Tigers at Awhitu<\/strong>, click on the following Scottish Poetry Library podcast interview: Sarah Broom.<\/a><\/p>\n
Sarah died on April 18, 2013, after a five year illness with lung cancer. She is survived by her husband and three children.
\n.<\/span><\/p>\n
—
\n.<\/span><\/p>\n
\"\"<\/a>To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub<\/strong> and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets from around the world, click here<\/strong><\/a> or on the Quill<\/strong> icon <\/strong>in the sidebar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
breath I am trying to breathe like the slow, low purr of a drowsy cat like the languid sway of an empty swing like the shiver of a thistle in the wind like someone about to stop breathing entirely I look for that place where breath becomes so light it vanishes, pulls away like a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22768","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=22768"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22778,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22768\/revisions\/22778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}