Description
Book SynopsisDom Bury’s Rite of Passage is an initiation into what it means to be alive on the planet in the midst of extinction, of climate, environmental and systematic collapse. It is a journey into the shadow of man’s distorted relationship with the earth. And yet in the utter darkness of this hour, these often provocative poems suggest that there is hope. That we have had to come to the edge of our own annihilation as a species to collectively shift how we live, that only in the dark glare of this crisis, can a new world from the ashes of the old one now be formed. Dom Bury is a writer and activist who runs workshops on the emotional and human impacts of climate change and environmental degradation. He received an Eric Gregory Award in 2016 and won the 2017 National Poetry Competition with his poem ‘The Opened Field’. Rite of Passage is his first collection.
Table of Contents9 What My Body Showed Me Kyrie 13 Hiraeth 14 Brother 16 The Opened Field 18 Black Bird, Nine Nails, One Child 19 Fois Gras 22 Spring Without Voices 23 The Chapel in the Sea 25 Under Dartington Redwoods 27 Our Species Dies irae 31 Snow Country 33 Why I Have Chosen Not to Have Children 34 Seasons — A Requiem 37 All I Can Offer You is This 38 On the Theme — Fire 40 Hunger Libera me 43 The Body’s New Weather 44 Love as a Project for Small Children with Eyelids 49 I Lie Down On the Ground to Make Peace with the Fire Jumping the Valley Towards Me 52 Completion 53 Extinction In Paradisum 57 Afterwards 58 Seeing the Whole World Begin Kindling 61 Letter from My Daughters 62 Metamorphosis 72 Passageway 73 Threshold 77 Morning
