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What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In The Poems of Others, invited poets pay homage to the poems that led them to write. Each Monday's delivery brings you the poem and an excerpt from the essay.
John Robert Lee
        (for Wayne Redman, d. 1978)

One always missed the turning, but found, in time
the broken sign that pointed crookedly, loth to
allow another stranger here. Perhaps this Tom
or Dick has plans for progress that will tow
the boats away and make them quaint; that will tame
this wild coast with pale rheumatics who tee

off where sea-egg shells and fishermen
now lie with unconcern. Naked children
            and their sticks flush crabs from out their holes
            and a bare-legged girl, dress in wet folds
wades slow towards a waning sun.

The sea rose angrily.
It knew that freedom here was short.
It remembered other coasts
made 'mod' by small-eyed men in big cars.

And as before, it knew she'd vanish
the bare-legged girl; the children and their crabs
would leave, a 'better' world would banish
them to imitation-coconut trays.

But those small eyes reflecting dollar signs
have not yet found the crooked finger to this peace;
and down the beach the women bathe their sons
who'll never talk, like Pap, of fishing seasons past.

Only memory will turn down this way
when some old man somewhere recalls his day
on this beach where sea-egg shells once lay.
from the book COLLECTED POEMS 1975-2015 / Peepal Tree Press
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What Sparks Poetry: 
John Robert Lee on Philip Larkin's "Church Going"

"I took, and still take, however subsumed, his neo-formal poetic forms, unfussy, concentrated, a modest musical tone playing on half rhymes and perhaps above all, the finely detailed and close, film-like observation of the world around him, physical, natural, and emotional. 'Church Going' was one of the poems I copied as I learned from him how to shape such pointed, accurate stanzas."
READ THIS WEEK'S ISSUE
Leila Chatti Wins 2021 Luschei Prize for African Poetry, for Her Collection Deluge

"Chris Abani praised the book, writing: 'A deeply human, political and spiritual exploration of a biological crisis, this debut collection wrestles with all the big concepts and with a profound dark night of the soul. It takes on religion, God, patriarchy, culture, and the body and its many betrayals in lyrical and urgent poems. A highly anticipated and important book.'"

via NEBRASKA TODAY
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