<\/p>\n
Phil Powrie’s ‘The night that takes our shape’, an ‘evocative, melancholy and beautiful’ poem is a much deserved Pick of the Month for October 2017.\u00a0 This dark and haunting poem struck a chord with many who felt it was one for our times; its reach even went as far as Charlottesville in the US.<\/span><\/p>\n Phil writes books on French cinema, and teaches cinema and French at a university in the south of the UK. He has published poetry in South<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The night that takes our shape<\/strong><\/p>\n afraid to\u00a0abandon behind us the night that takes our shape your limbs\u00a0pull away like garlands and march and\u00a0pray more than\u00a0what we lost we regret what we never had <\/p>\n Voters’ comments included:<\/p>\n It is beautiful, so personal and yet so much about our times. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n the candles in the night make me think of protests, Nazis with torches, counter protesters (this vote is from Charlottesville). I feel the darkness. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Elegant, succinct, evokes a clear image… <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n For its mood, and the melancholic form of dim extinguishing. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n A refined and all at once unsettling use of the sonnet form <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n It’s beautifully compressed and suggestive — a small gem. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n A powerfully evocative poem , tight, bare and visual <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n a moving poem, especially the way it sustains the multiple metaphor of darkness <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n the way it moves through night-time images, sensations and feelings like the mutable shadows one sees in the dark, like a dream. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n powerful shifting imagery that avoids the predictable relationships that often render poems staid and overly familiar in their metaphorical usage.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n lovely dark poem that fits our dark times and remind us of the need not to despair <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n I love the beautiful language and the carefully developed metaphors of the soldier and the priest. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n An intriguing, suggestive, atmospheric piece of writing that lingers in the mind and repays close attention and rethinking.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n …It spoke to me, especially the verse ‘more than what we lost we regret what we never had’. It evoked a friendship I recently lost, or better said never managed to have. This is very true. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n A stirring evocation of the paradoxes of night and darkness–rebirth, certainly, but also mourning and loss. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n This is a lovely poem that merges images of faith, war, and love.<\/em> <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Phil Powrie’s ‘The night that takes our shape’, an ‘evocative, melancholy and beautiful’ poem is a much deserved Pick of the Month for October 2017.\u00a0 This dark and haunting poem struck a chord with many who felt it was one for our times; its reach even went as far as Charlottesville in the US. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017-poetry-picks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15175","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15175"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15186,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15175\/revisions\/15186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nholding our\u00a0candles like flickering flags
\nhere am I a\u00a0soldier here a priest each with a weapon
\nyou march you\u00a0pray in a patch of light<\/p>\n
\noffered\u00a0lightly to the clock\u2019s lazy eyes
\nyour hands\u00a0clasp around mine
\nand you sing\u00a0come dance with me come dance again<\/p>\n
\nto hold the\u00a0night at bay
\nto keep\u00a0abstracted dark forever from the field<\/p>\n
\nand dark\u00a0shapes come to haunt us
\nmarching and\u00a0praying with their unbearable battalions<\/p>\n