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

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.