Poetry Month: Catherine Graham - Winterkill

Catherine Graham is the author of four acclaimed poetry collections: The Watch (Abbey Press, Northern Ireland, 1998) and through (Insomniac Press) the poetry trilogy Pupa (2003), The Red Element (2008) and Winterkill (2010).Vice President of Project Bookmark Canada, she holds an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University (UK) and teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies. Her work is anthologized in The White Page / An Bhileog Bhan: Twentieth Century Irish Women Poets and her poetry has appeared in journals in North America, Ireland and the United Kingdom and is showcased in Poetry Is Public Is Poetry and Nuit Blanche Words Travel Fast. Visit www.catherinegraham.com.

TTQ - What role do you see poetry playing in an increasingly digital world, and do you feel the e-book will ultimately take the place of the printed page?

Catherine Graham - Poetry will thrive regardless of the medium. The digital world provides poetry with another platform. Despite the rapid growth of the e-book, the printed page will last. There’s room for both.

The Buried

In a shallow grave of sand,
done up to the nines
in a huge flowery chiffon dress
stretched out like a sail
on a beach in the Hebrides,
pecked to pieces by birds.
                            Tilda Swinton

The breeze soothes the summer’s
burning as it lifts off                                                      
the lake but the hot                                                                                      
sand holds the white heat
so we burrow our toes to find
the cooling. Bury me
in a shallow grave of sand.

I lie back and you shovel
beach over my pale
body. I let the itch of it
enter me. It’s as if a thousand
insects have taken free reign
and clothed me in their stings. I am
dressed up to the nines

now, a level
away from all that I once knew.
A head. But when I close
my eyes I become
the buried.
A cloud passes over
in a huge flowery chiffon dress

and the sand is the smell
of my new skin. The grainy
case of my lungs pump
through homes of crabs.
I am the sound
of the underneath                                                                                                     
stretched out like a sail

in a photograph. I am pure
verb going nowhere.
Even the wind
can’t move
me. The sand bars my body
from the water’s rise                                                                                             
on a beach in the Hebrides

where time is carved back,
land-locked to the hours
of sand that has
no hours, only bones.
I’m not afraid
of you leaving; I’m only afraid of being
pecked to pieces by birds.

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