You looked, you read, you voted and the ‘beautiful and disquieting poem’ that is Claire Cox’s ‘The card given out at his funeral’ is the IS&T Pick of the Month for February.
Born in Hong Kong, Claire now lives and works in Oxfordshire. She is Associate Editor for ignitionpress, and is currently a part-time practice-based PhD student at Royal Holloway, University of London studying poetry and disaster.
She has asked that her £10 ‘prize’ be donated to the Royal Brompton & Harefield Hospitals Charity.
The card given out at his funeral
has no obituary. No order of service.
Just his name, curlicued and slant,
year of birth, hyphen, year of death.
Above that, an old print plate of his
reproduced landscape-wise, its surface
sectioned into eighths, each eighth quizzing
depth of cut, luminescence, blackness,
how acid bites, how resin resists.
‘Fig. A’ points to pale ripples:
a thumbprint in negative,
dabbed there momentarily –
his brief experiment in flesh.
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Other voters’ comments included:
Hit me in the heart – understated, interesting use of language … her poem stayed with me the most… e.g. how we are all but ‘a short experiment in flesh’.
Beautiful, restrained and powerful
I like its economy and unexpectedness.
I love this poem’s allusiveness, its brevity, its poignance.
Oh the sadness.
A surprising, and beautifully detailed memorial to the printmaker.
Such a gentle reverie and homily of a lost much loved one. Gentle, spiritual, thoughtful and with grace
The simplicity of the form and language allows the grief to speak forth without rhetoric.
simply written yet finely crafted
A brief but recognisable representation of a life.
Beautifully written and resonant.
An extraordinary poem- superbly crafted
I liked the baldness of the opening stanza and the concreteness of details.
It tells a story, but in a stark way. Heartfelt