At Beckett’s Grave

Häftad, Engelska, 2025

Del 92 i serien Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series

338 kr

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Beskrivning

that moment / when nothing happens, you want it all to come / back to get you, even the hard stuff —Our increasingly nihilistic age is marked by profound sorrow. We are grieving institutions, art forms, the natural world, our communities – even our very humanity. We are overwhelmed by lives lost to war, violence, genocide, poverty, natural disasters, and disease. We live with the knowledge that a random occurrence could bring an absurd end to any life at any time.In At Beckett’s Grave Robin Durnford gazes at the granite slab marking the resting place of the Irish playwright. In the middle of the ornate tombstones of an overgrown cemetery in Paris, Durnford finds a powerful metaphor in Samuel Beckett – the artist, the exile, the anti-fascist who joined the French resistance. Beckett’s work – and the stark memory of his life – cuts through grandiose self-regard with a razor-sharp message: there is no final meaning. Yet we move forward, regardless.It turns out that the pause — the stage direction central to so many of Beckett’s plays — may be the answer. Grief for an absent loved one never truly ends. Grief itself will never end. Yet, the poetic pause creates space for grief to breathe. During that lingering breath, abiding sorrow carves a path toward hope, one word, one poem, at a time.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2025-09-16
Mått:127 x 191 x 12 mm
Vikt:68 g
Format:Häftad
Språk:Engelska
Serie:Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series
Antal sidor:120
Förlag:McGill-Queen's University Press
ISBN:9780228025641

Utforska kategorier

Poesi inom Skönlitteratur

Mer om författaren

Robin Durnford teaches English literature at John Abbott College and is the author of A Lovely Gutting.

Recensioner i media

"Robin Durnford’s latest poetry collection opens with a newborn and ends, as the title suggests, at Beckett’s grave in Paris. These poems are a conversation, not with the Irish-born modernist playwright himself, but with his texts on absurdity and existence and loneliness. Through the deaths of her parents and the birth of her son, Newfoundland-born Durnford explores home as ‘an assault, pummelled / by one-two punches of hope despair.’ Like Beckett, who refuses to have his body returned to Ireland after his death anticipating ‘an eternal dose of disgust,’ At Beckett’s Grave rails against nostalgia and saccharine notions of belonging, battling against church bells that don’t stop but ‘clang like / god coming at us.’ The bells go on and the granite and wind and fir of home persist. Durnford has crafted a steady stare right through you." Monica Kidd, author of The Year of Our Beautiful Exile

Innehållsförteckning

ACT INewborn as Abstract Art 3Lament 5Existentialist 7Whale Watching 8Dag Gadol 9Self-Musings 10Break-Through 12Fascist Literature 14Slug 16Squatters 18Arctic Still Life 20April Frieze 21An End 22Auberge du Mont 24Fields of Blue 25Quiet Muse 27Another Anniversary 29The Hole 31Spook 34Reflection 36Watercolour 37My Nature 40Map of Islands 41Claw 42ACT IILiterature Is Like a Foreign Country 45What the Sea Means 46Ghost Town 47Reading Jane Eyre as a Ghost 49Lured 51Sour Apples 53The Rain 55Firsts 56By the Fire 57Wave 59The Meanest Flower 61Clay 63Siren Song 65The Waves 66Urn 67Against Seasons 68Against Mermaids 70Skating at Parc La Fontaine 72Old Girlfriends 73Jackknife 74Under the Milk 76Sea Monster 78Crab 80Sparrow 83Bell-cot 84Split 85Sardine 87In the Metro at a Station 89The Living On 91End Game 93Notes 97Acknowledgments 101