Description
Book SynopsisWhen knowledge is ours at the tap of a key, what is it we’re accumulating, and is it at the expense of another, more intuitive, kind of knowing? The word ‘fool’ derives from the Latin follis, one of whose meanings is ‘empty-headed person’. We can’t imagine such mindlessness but might it be possible that by ‘unknowing’ a thing we can start to see it properly? There’s a lot the fool doesn’t know – otherwise they wouldn’t be a fool. But can anyone be trusted to know anything? What can we be trusted to know? A certain apprehension runs through these poems; a low-level hum of discordance between inner and outer worlds, between the sceptical and the wondering mind. Ideas of belief and objective truth play out in various ways, often through lone figures, thinking aloud in a wilful kind of performance of being. Fool is Greta Stoddart’s fourth collection. Her third collection Alive Alive O was published by Bloodaxe in 2015.
Trade ReviewGreta Stoddart sets transience against endurance: the certainty of human mortality against the mysteries of forbearance. -- David Harsent * Chair of Judges, Roehampton Poetry Prize, on Alive Alive O *
Colloquial, faintly unruly, the poems travel light on adventures of consciousness, channelling the energies of a big, agnostic imagination into new forms. -- Carol Rumens * Poetry Review, on Alive Alive O *
When not confronting life and death as we most vividly encounter them, Stoddart’s poems suggest the ways in which our mortality is ever-present in daily life… Alive Alive O is a compelling book, defiant in the face of life’s losses. -- Ben Wilkinson * Times Literary Supplement *
Table of Contents11 The Act 13 Where to look 15 A glass of water 16 What is a question 18 Perfect Field 20 Second Nature 22 Three tulips in a milk bottle 24 Clay 26 Slow Cinema 28 Adult Education 29 Fool 30 How I come to clean the windows 31 Smile 33 Birds Britannica: Exhibition Catalogue 36 Cold and lonely wastes 37 Concorde 39 The little living room 41 School Field 42 Remote 44 Constellation 46 Consider the mornings 49 Once upon a time 50 Untimely 54 Walking into church 55 Spell 56 The long grass 57 Performance 58 Flowers for my ego and a dark stage 59 The Rose Garden 63 I wish I could be ‘fresh, honest and brave’ 64 Yesterday I planted a tree 65 What is a tree 66 My life came up to me and said 68 Lie in a field on your back
