{"id":1149,"date":"2008-01-21T08:35:34","date_gmt":"2008-01-21T08:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=1149"},"modified":"2008-01-21T08:35:34","modified_gmt":"2008-01-21T08:35:34","slug":"coniston-a-series-of-three-short-poems-by-andrea-porter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/coniston-a-series-of-three-short-poems-by-andrea-porter\/","title":{"rendered":"Coniston – a series of three short poems by Andrea Porter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Coniston*<\/span>


1. The Ferry <\/span>

The child on his father\u2019s lap<\/span>
reaches out, touches the water.<\/span>

He trails a finger, sucks it.<\/span>
It tastes of old rain, he says.<\/span>

It tastes of not the sea, deep,<\/span>
slowness, town scouts fingers.<\/span>


2. Campbell <\/span>

Cold water cures many ills,<\/span>
lowers desire <\/span>
to the pitch of  an Arctic char. <\/span>

Shafts of femur and tibia, <\/span>
the curved chassis of ribs <\/span>
record the speed of decay.<\/span>

Note it is less than <\/span>
three hundred miles per hour.<\/span>

A clutch of teeth,<\/span>
the flip of a shell,<\/span>
the pace of a glacier.<\/span>


3. Ruskin\u2019s Ice House Overlooking the Lake<\/span>
(Brantswood)<\/span>

A cell carved from the cliff\u2019s flank,<\/span>
he could sit here to cool his head,<\/span>
as a world races to melting point.<\/span>
There is a comfort in dark days,<\/span>
the ease of keeping what is.<\/span>
He prefers winter; he knows<\/span>
that a mountain can hold ice,<\/span>
can school water in stillness,<\/span>
can reflect the nature of cold.<\/span>



* Coniston is the glacially formed lake where Donald Campbell died attempting the world speed record on water. Ruskin the well known nineteenth century art critic and social theorist moved to live in a house overlooking the lake. He suffered all his life from severe bouts of depression.<\/p>\n

\u2022 <\/span><\/font>Andrea Porter is a member of the poetry performance group Joy of Six
\nthat has performed in Britain and New York. She has been published in a
\nnumber of poetry magazines (both paper and online) in the UK , Canada ,
\nAustralia and USA . Her narrative sequence of poems Bubble<\/span>
\nwas adapted for Radio 4 as a drama by the RSC playwrite Fraser Grace.
\nShe received an Escalator Award from the British Arts Council (East)
\nand The New Writing Partnership in 2006 to complete a novel. She sleeps
\neither too little or too much.<\/font> www.joyofsix.co.uk<\/a> <\/font>
<\/span>
<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coniston*1. The Ferry The child on his father\u2019s lapreaches out, touches the water.He trails a finger, sucks it.It tastes of old rain, he says.It tastes of not the sea, deep,slowness, town scouts fingers.2. Campbell Cold water cures many ills,lowers desire to the pitch of  an Arctic char. Shafts of femur and tibia, the curved chassis […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}