Katharine Peddie
For Nancy Gaffield
If you go back far enough to say
1400 you can’t get anywhere any more
owhere are you then
GOING TO ST IVES
I walked on
Hewas Water
SPACES FOR SAPPHO
for & from Anne Carson
0
So soft Sappho
heard
hard words
Many syllabled Ppppsappoppo
--
Today, in English, she all soft sibilants and faded f’s, but in fact she is ‘Psappho’
In ancient Greek – and indeed in modern Greek – if you hear a native speaker say
her name, she comes across spitting and popping hard p’s. Ppppsappoppo. We
have eased off her name, made her docile and sliding, where she is really
difficult, diffuse, many-syllabled, many-minded, vigorous and hard (Margaret
Reynolds, The Sappho Companion).
After 31 After 51
looking at him listening to you
he a God feeling he
can come close
to you
I seeing you only
in reflecting [refracting?]
mirror fragments
74 a
]
goatherd
]
flock in empty space
obscure
relation to
]
roses
]
]
__
found fragment
five in a field
145
do not move stones
Copyright Katharine Peddie 2015
Kat Peddie is a PhD student and assistant lecturer at the University of Kent. She has published poetry in Shearsman, Tears in the Fence and Litmus
magazines. She has written for The
Writing Occurs as Song: A Kelvin Corcoran Reader.
She can be heard here performing with Sam Bailey and the Canterbury Scratch Orchestra at Piano in the Woods, an event associated with Free Range.
She can be heard here performing with Sam Bailey and the Canterbury Scratch Orchestra at Piano in the Woods, an event associated with Free Range.