We Have To Leave The Earth

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Friday Poem – ‘Peeling the Skin’ by Carolyn Jess-Cooke

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Peeling the Skin’ by Carolyn Jess-Cooke from her collection We Have to Leave the Earth. You can hear Carolyn chatting about the book on the The Seren Poetry Podcast which is available now on all podcast platforms.

This cover shows a photograph of a tangled ball of blue fishing line in relief against a pale pink and blue background. The text reads: We Have to Leave the Earth. Carolyn Jess-Cooke

Carolyn Jess-Cooke’s third collection We Have to Leave the Earth deftly interweaves the personal and the political. Climate change is confronted in a sequence about the Arctic; poems that are vividly descriptive of an extreme landscape, sensitive to the effects of global warming. A second sequence, The House of Rest, is a history in 9 poems of Josephine Butler, (1828-1906) a pioneering feminist activist. There are also tender poems about family, mental health, motherhood and the earth.

Peeling the Skin They’d try to find the hem first, the beginning of that lace-fine calyx that sometimes ran deliciously from shoulder to waist in a continuum of cells shucked by too long in the burning glare. No one thought to rub in sun cream, it seems, for each summer my lunar Irish epidermis crisped from salmon to magenta before flaking off great silvery coats and blankets, milky curtains, pearl bodices. The confetti of my childhood lies in corners of Connemara, the sands of Donegal, bearing traces of fingers that picked me to riddance. I’d hear the sellotape-tear of strips they’d peel from my back and I felt like something being primed for the spit, or dressed for the rite. Sometimes they’d shear what wasn’t ready for shearing, and blood would globe at the new rind that knitted under the husk. I think it was this small breach, this being pared in pain for others’ pleasure, that taught me where DNA ended and I begin, and begin, and begin.

The Seren Poetry Podcast is a new series of in-depth interviews with Seren poets. Episode 5 with Carolyn Jess-Cooke is available to listen to now.

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We Have to Leave the Earth is available on the Seren website for £9.99

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Friday Poem – ‘Eva’ by Carolyn Jess-Cooke

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Eva’ by Carolyn Jess-Cooke from her new collection We Have to Leave the Earth.

This cover shows a photo of a balled up piece of blue fishing-twine lying against a pale pink and blue background.

Carolyn Jess-Cooke’s most recent collection We Have to Leave the Earth deftly interweaves the personal and the political. Climate change is confronted in a sequence about the Arctic; poems that are vividly descriptive of an extreme landscape, sensitive to the effects of global warming. A second sequence, The House of Rest, is a history in 9 poems of Josephine Butler, (1828-1906) a pioneering feminist activist. There are also tender poems about family.

Eva Then you were here real as a wound. They placed you in my arms with such care I thought you a parcel of feathers that might fly away. I stroked your face – your eyes were midnight blue. Time bended to you, language re-strung its instruments to sound your name. Visitors admired your lace- ears, your peony fists, but they could not see you as I did – you slid from your skin just as you had slipped out of me and became a shard of morning light, turning cobwebs to crystal thread, the windowsill a gold bar, dew on hedges constellations of delicacy. I knew then this love was alchemy. Our bond is not made of that loose wet rope they cut but of instruments that show the unseen and sound the silent, the heart’s infinite missions harnessed in flight.

We Have to Leave the Earth is available on the Seren website: £9.99

Create your free Seren account and enjoy 20% off every book you buy direct from us.

Join us online for Virtual First Thursday on 2nd December from 7:30pm GMT where Carolyn will be reading from We Have to Leave the Earth alongside Jeremy Dixon. Tickets are £2 plus Eventbrite admin fee. Buy yours here www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/216146057677.

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Friday Poem – ‘What We Found in the Arctic, or, the Geopolitics of New Natural Resources Uncovered by Melted Ice’ by Carolyn Jess-Cooke

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘What We Found in the Arctic, or, the Geopolitics of New Natural Resources Uncovered by Melted Ice’ by Carolyn Jess-Cooke from her new collection We Have To Leave The Earth.

This cover shows a photo of a ball of tangled fishing twine resting against a pink and blue background.

Carolyn Jess-Cooke’s new poetry collection is both keenly political and deeply personal. The opening poem ‘now’ features a seemingly peaceful domestic scene of a family lounging at home as the starting point for meditation on history, time, mortality and the fate of the planet. There are hints of a struggle with depression stemming from a difficult childhood. There is a cherished child diagnosed with autism. There are two sequences: Songs for the Arctic, inspired by field work done for the Arctic at the Thought Foundation, poems that are vividly descriptive of an extreme landscape, aware of the fraught history of exploration and sensitive to the way changes in the pack ice are the most significant indicators of man-made global warming. The other sequence, The House of Rest, is a history in nine poems of Josephine Butler (1828-1906), who pioneered feminist activism, and helped to repeal the Contagious Diseases Act 1869, which facilitated sexual violence in the name of disease prevention. Jess-Cooke is unafraid of dark material but is also ultimately hopeful and full of creative strategies to meet challenging times. 

What We Found in the Arctic, or, the Geopolitics of New Natural Resources Uncovered by Melted Ice Mme and M. Dumoulin, missing since 1942 Nickel Rubber ducks A Russian flag pronged on the seafloor Copper Three Incan children, sacrificed Anthrax Bird fossils from the Cretaceous period Gold Prehistoric skis Saami, Nenets, Khanty, Evenk, Chukchi, Aleut, Yupik, Dolgan, and Inuit Natural Gas 1700 species of plants Record levels of microplastics Diamonds A hunter from 3000 B.C. Oil A horse from the Iron Age, with perfectly preserved manure Territorial claims for the Arctic Continental Shelf Polar bears, starving Coal Disputations concerning territorial waters 45,000 Russian troops 3,400 Russian military vehicles 41 Russian ships 15 Russian submarines 110 Russian planes The albedo effect, claimed by no one

We Have To Leave The Earth is available on the Seren website: £9.99

Create your free Seren account and enjoy 20% off every book you buy direct from us.

Join us online for the virtual launch of We Have To Leave The Earth on Tuesday 16th November from 7pm. Carolyn will be reading from the collection alongside guest readers Liz Berry and Jen Hadfield. Register for free via Eventbrite here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/193473353007.