時間 Time：2009/1/25 (Sun) 5:00pm-6:00pm
地點 Venue：油麻地 Kubrick
主持 Moderators：Florence Ng、Polly Ho、Wong Wai Yim
詩人來賓 Guest Poet： Michael Holland
Michael Holland來自澳洲，居港八年，任Heinemann Australian Dictionary英文字典的編輯，Michael喜愛思考，喜愛文學，喜愛家庭，Metaflora不是他第一本書，卻是他第一本詩集。他的詩句簡單易懂，你會讀懂它，因為Michael把文字都讀懂了，細仔讀下去，你會發現文字的韻律和幾乎遺失的詩的傳統，淺白的文字便能构出一個豐富的意象，他是一個能寫出金色詩句的詩人，他的Thread Golden是第一首打動我的詩，如果它亦打動你，在年三十晚這個特別的日子，讓我們一起讀他金色的詩句。
Thread Golden
In the fabric of the night
A golden thread grew fearsome bright
A blazing thread whose needle true
Touched my heart by passing through,
An unseen hand allows it flight
To pass again into the night
I cannot see, I do not know
Where the hand and she will go
2 則留言:
dear mr holland,
your exemplary verses are in trochees & iambi.
do the change of meter gain momentum in the poem?
thanks in advance.
victor FOK
20090110
frenchmarkets@gmail.com
Dear Mr Fok,
Thank you for your kind words. I am not completely sure that I understand what your question asks exactly, but I suspect it is a very interesting question. I hope that what follows will be useful. If not please give me a specific example to support your idea, and I might be able to give a more fruitful response.
Generally I write in iambic form. But, as you know, iambic poems often have variations in which the trochee and other stress patterns occur.
The poems are different: you can see iambic feet used in the poem ‘Inside’. The sense of enclosure given by iambic quatrains, especially in short lines, was significant for the poem’s theme of dealing with powerlessness. Here the ‘I’ of the poem is caged by quatrains as well the situation described in the poem itself.
‘Recession’ uses trochees to begin most lines. The stress falling on the first syllable of the first words here for me has a declarative sense. In its small way the poem ventures that one of the few things we can state for certain is that memory is never certain. I see the connection between using trochees to begin lines in poems when these lines have a certain excitability or sense of discovery or other exuberance about them; the initial stress seems to ‘surprise’ the reader.
/Mo-ments scud in the blueness
/None can be creased or folded away
For /thought-ful use another day
...
/Speckled pearl and cinnamon
/Caught as the sun catches things
...
In other poems like ‘La Kasbah’ the stress falls less obviously, but reflects natural speaking rhythms (I hope). I certainly don’t write poems with stresses consciously in mind. But knowledge of them can be useful in description and analysis.
Best wishes,
Michael
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