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the poet
Experimental formalist poet and musician Anthony Etherin specialises in working under strict constraints. His three poems for iamb are written in the ottava rima form and in iambic metres. Colourscape is intersected by a Shakespearean sonnet in iambic dimeter – each of the third feet of the ottava rima’s lines belonging also to the sonnet – while Famine Moon is a palindrome by letter. An omnibus edition of Anthony's work can be found in Knit Ink (and Other Poems).
the poems
July
I walked a starlit field that cold July.
I found a star and named it after you,
the way the ancients mapped the gods to sky.
I named another for myself and drew
a line between us. Then, I said goodbye ...
I wonder if the stars have named us too,
with names that last far longer than our own –
and echo, gently, mid that great unknown?
Colourscape
The night
was green.
It might
A day that might have been was painted black.
A brush erased the moss and amber leaves.
Then, any light that came was given back –
consumed and flung across aborted eves –
as time and space, the frame, began to crack ...
Beneath the new, the old dimension grieves:
That day became stained glass – an onyx mass
Soon, every truth I’m told will likewise pass.
the grass
and dew
were blue.
Famine Moon
No omen, I’m a foetal stone.
I die, null, at a fate lit far –
die raw, one loss, Selene resewn
on woe. We lord a memo, star
afar, at some mad role we own.
On, we, serene, less sole now are.
I draft. I let a fatal lune –
I die, not slate. O, famine moon!
Publishing credits
July / Colourscape: Slate Petals (and Other Wordscapes) (Penteract Press)
Famine Moon: Stray Arts (and Other Inventions) (Penteract Press)