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4th October, 2024

Friday Poem – ‘Golden Shovel: After Iris Murdoch’ by Katrina Naomi

Photo of the golden sky over a foamy sea

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Golden Shovel: After Iris Murdoch’ by Katrina Naomi from her collection Battery Rocks in honour of it having been Highly Commended by the Forward Prizes and featured in the Forward Book of Poetry 2025.

Golden Shovel: After Iris Murdoch The sea is something that happens to you. An mor. An mor. This is what I’ve learned as I rush each morning like a penitent – diarghen – before a decent shrine. I cannot – ha ny vynnav vy – help myself. I know this is simply stated – forgive me – words mean so little since I dived head and heart into high tide, every pore, every follicle, alert. It goes deep this affair. They say I was dunked in the water at three days old. I’ve never dried myself off never wanted terra firma – the sensible, the understood. That isn’t living. The sea rocks me awake, like sex; good sex, is the nearest to swimming on a chill, bright day, out to the far west – further. An mor. You’ll say I’m bragging but this is the place to swim – to be freed, away from the house – its reminders of being settled, where you find all the oughts and shoulds, those horrid visitors. They – their commanding voices – can’t be heard as I descend into lanow, its bleak welcome, its byrla, one I almost understand, am warmed by, despite its sheer fall into nothingness out past the rocks. Yet this neuvya – this swimming – still terrifies with the light unable to filter through the folds of cold, into the deep of under, how it blends, forms, reforms. And darkness gathers like a shoal; where ledges of granite glitter-shout. They are enough to stop me sirening up, to the known – aswonnys. Who wouldn’t make every effort to stay? Yes, this is an obsession, a glorious reacquaintance – kales – precarious at best. I plunge from the rough-cut stairway Kernewek (Cornish) words: an mor – the sea; diarghen – penitent or barefoot; ha ny vynnav vy – and I don’t want to; lanow – a rising tide; byrla – embrace; neuvya – to swim; aswonnys – known; kales – difficult.

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Related Books

This cover shows a vintage photo of a woman sleeping with her head on a pillow, a large conch shell pressed to her ear. The text reads: Battery Rocks, Katrina Naomi

Battery Rocks

Katrina Naomi

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