HistoryIt’s only a week but already you are slipping
down the cold black chute of history. Postcards.
Phonecalls. It’s like never having seen the Wall,
except in pieces on the dusty shelves of friends.
Once I queued for hours to see the moon in a box
inside a museum, so wild it should have been kept
in a zoo at least but there it was, unremarkable,
a pile of dirt some god had shaken down.
I wait for your letters now: a fleet of strange cargo
with news of changing borders, a heart’s small
journeys. They’re like relicts of a saint.
Opening the dry papers is kissing a bone.
Maura Dooley***********************************
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Poet and freelance writer Maura Dooley was born in Truro, England, and grew up in Bristol. Educated at the University of York, she gained a postgraduate certificate of Education at Bristol. She is Lecturer in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London.
Her poetry collections include Explaining Magnetism (1991) and Kissing A Bone (1996), both Poetry Book Society recommendations. Kissing A Bone was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. She has also edited a number of poetry anthologies, most recently The Honey Gatherers: An Anthology of Love Poems, published in 2003, and is editor of How Novelists Work (2000), a collection of essays by contemporary writers.
She was a Centre Director at the Arvon Foundation and founded and directed the Literature programme at the South Bank Centre. She works in film and theatre and has recently helped develop educational films for Jim Henson Productions. Her work in the theatre includes running workshops for Performing Arts Labs, devising new plays for young people. In 2001 she was a judge for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the National Poetry Competition and the London Arts' New London Writers Awards. She has also chaired the Poetry Book Society. Maura Dooley lives in London. ***********************************
:hi:
RL