Victoria Kennefick: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

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Deposition

 

I love you the way waves love cliffs.

They fling lace skirts against rock,

can-can kicks rush the top,

fall back down; froth clings—a kiss.

Sometimes they wash worn things to shore;

sometimes, they roll silent, say nothing,

tunnel under, hide in echo-dark—

wait until there’s a horizon.

 

I love you in this way because

you are a planet in space that orbits

the sun coolly, allows for oceans.

I love you in this way because

you let me moon about as a pond,

or thrash and flail over piers.

You scoop me up, stone and soil,

sand I’ve made for you. 

 

I love you, don’t mind if I whip in your eye,

erode a piece, I’ll make up for it –

silt and foam, my wedding dress;

spray and salt, my veil, bouquet of blue nets.

I love you because without you there is just sea;

a body all at sea, waving surrender to sky,

kicking and screaming against the line—

water, not going anywhere.

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Victoria Kennefick's debut collection, Eat or We Both Starve (Carcanet Press, 2021), won the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize and the Dalkey Book Festival Emerging Writer of the Year Award. It was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Costa Poetry Book Award, Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, and the Butler Literary Prize. A UCD/Arts Council of Ireland Writer-in-Residence 2023 and Poet-in-Residence at the Yeats Society Sligo 2022-23, Victoria is now Cork County Council Writer-in-Residence 2024. Her second collection, Egg/Shell (Carcanet Press, 2024) was a PBS Choice for Spring 2024 and BBC Poetry Extra Book of the Month for March.

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                                Claude Monet, Rough Sea at Étretat, 1883. Oil on canvas, 81 x 100 cm. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon

Comments

[Thomas O'Grady]

Yes, this is a lovely poem, rich in metaphor and rich in feeling. It’s unabashedly non-ironic about love!

[Indran J Amirthanayagam]

Wonderful love poem. Gladdens the heart. Purifies the mind. Thank you Victoria and Terence. Indran Amirthanayagam, author Seer (Hanging Loose Press, 2024)

[Sr. Leslie]

It is funny that this should be the poem for today…One of the readings at Lauds was 1 Corinthians 13: 1-13, about love and “Love never ends”…For me, Victoria’s poems compliments it …It is all of One piece…Plus Monet’s painting…Beautiful!…Thank you Terence and Victoria!…(A friend of mine is a Priest in charge of some Anglican Churches in Cork, I will have her check out Victoria’s poems)

[Clarinda]

Crashing! Smashing! Yes!

[Don Berger]

In the first stanza of this poem the speaker clearly has watched these waves for a long time, hours, months, years, a lifetime or two, at times even in the "echo-dark" (!!!), and then we hear her actually becoming the water, enacting the waves like she knows them even better than we thought she did, another miracle, then in the last section, phase, we have to read even more carefully to gather that she offers the listener assurance, that she's turned into the bride, that her picture of the waves widens, includes a "bouquet of blue nets," and by the closing four lines that the water and the speaker, fused, become "just sea...a body all at sea," surrendering fitfully during the greatest most thrilling surprise: the water, the bride and the speaker both, stop moving, have no destination, flailing with screams against "the [mysterious] line," the horizon! A miracle of a poem, a phenomenal pick of the week!

[Terence Winch]

Indran J (J?): thanks for the comment.

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, Leslie. Poetry & prayer are often not so far apart.

[Terence Winch]

Great comment. Thanks, Don. (I also liked the can-can reference.)

[Cindy Hochman]

Oh, I adore this poem. I love the fact that it's love poem with metaphors from all the awesomeness of nature. It's so well-crafted and inspirational; makes me want to read it over and over to absorb every image. The title is interesting, because the word "deposition" sounds like legalese, and yet the poem is not at all stodgy (or formal) like legal language is. And those last few lines—breathtaking! Congrats, Victoria, I definitely want to read more of your work. And thanks, Terence, for sharing such a gorgeous poem.

[muhaiminabdullah.com]

Can I adopt this poem as authentic material for my class? I do love the way you present your ideas in it.

[Terence Winch]

Thank you, Cindy, for that comment.

[Paul Genega]

Gorgeous poem.

[Eileen Reich]

Wonderful poem and great artwork. I loved it.