Alice Oswald
Alice Oswald
Alice Oswaldis a British poet from Reading, Berkshire who won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPoet
bags barely belong break category fill heads hollow legs mostly quickly
Webs are made mostly of spaces. They break easily. They barely exist. They belong to the category of half-things: mist, smoke, shrouds, ghosts, membranes, retinas or rags; and they quickly fill up with un-things: old legs and wings and heads and hollow abdomens and body bags of wasps.
becomes billions committed equally hear hits instantly relief sound sudden
It's a relief to hear the rain. It's the sound of billions of drops, all equal, all equally committed to falling, like a sudden outbreak of democracy. Water, when it hits the ground, instantly becomes a puddle or rivulet or flood.
begun bend branch grown itself leaves pause sap stopping unable unfolds until
If you bend a branch until it's horizontal, the sap will slow to a stopping point: a comma or colon, made of leaves grown into one another and over one another and hardened. Out of this pause comes a flower, which unfolds itself in spirals, as if the leaf form, unable to keep to its line, had begun to pivot.
bright creature green layer living sleeve stands survives thin
A living tree is a changing, sleeve shape, a wet, thin, bright green creature that survives in the thin layer between heartwood and bark. It stands waiting for light, which it catches in the close-woven sieves of its leaves.
blows closed cut forming mass
When the wind blows through a wood, its mass is cut and closed by every leaf, forming a train of jittery vortices in the air.
addition anonymous cast courage inhabit lose men miss names neighbours ordinary stripped trip
Stripped of its plot, the 'Iliad' is a scattering of names and biographies of ordinary soldiers: men who trip over their shields, lose their courage or miss their wives. In addition to these, there is a cast of anonymous people: the farmers, walkers, mothers, neighbours who inhabit its similes.
along cut dates dead found height line side time turning
A dead tree, cut into planks and read from one end to the other, is a kind of line graph, with dates down one side and height along the other, as if trees, like mathematicians, had found a way of turning time into form.
afford area awake friction kicks life means rage relaxing senses
There's a lot of rage in my head. I like the friction that means there is nothing relaxing about writing a poem. I can't afford to relax in any area of life. You have to keep your senses awake to all the complacency that kicks in - particularly for the English.
coming exercise force great hard humans point view
I have this exercise where I force myself to look out from the flower's point of view at these great walloping humans coming down the path, and try, just try and feel it from their point of view because it's a different world to them, a fascinating hard one.
easiest either human mentality relaxing seems simplest slip structure work
I think it is the easiest mentality for a human being to be either colonized or to colonize. The structure of either the slave or the master seems to be the simplest and the most relaxing one to slip into. Either you are a slave, and you don't have to think for yourself, or you're a master, and you don't have to work for yourself.
people range
There's a whole range of words that people use about landscape. Pastoral? Idyll? I can't stand them.
absolute language natural ownership simply translate weird
I try not to invent; I try simply to translate the weird language of the natural world. And I'm not into absolute ownership of things.
latin pattern preferred sentence shift word
I much preferred Latin to Greek. I loved the language being such a pattern that you could not shift a word without the whole sentence falling to pieces.
bad best examining honest ignore line motive poem whether
That is the best instruction you could ever give a poet: whether you're examining a bad line in a poem or a bad motive for action, keep well your repining - meaning, don't ignore the honest muttering in your head.