Listening to the Deep Song can be purchased from the publisher.
Listening to the Deep Song (Bright South Press, 2022)
Part travel diary, part meditation on Spain and its cultures, part poetic dialogue with the poetry of Lorca, Anne Collins’ Listening to the Deep Song is a beautifully written testimony to her long enthusiasm for the many sides of Spanish culture. Bringing together her training in flamenco dance, her love of Lorca’s poetry and her several journeys through Spain, Anne Collins offers her readers a personal response to a unique blend of cultures that continues to speak to the 21st century world. Varied and many-layered, marked by close observation and thoughtful questioning, this is a delightful book.
Peter Boyle
Learning to Spell
After the Life of FG Lorca
The boy learns to spell leaf
it turns to leaves on a yellow tree.
Leaf through the mistake of years –
a complicated task, a lot of rubbing out.
There’s knife and shelf, the rule’s the same
do your homework. By mistake the evening
a knife-edge wind cuts the leaves.
The alarm, the shelves full of books,
the guards are spell-bound.
The boy changes into a bird
watches through the mist on the panes
writes sentences with the word leaf,
a complicated task, a lot of rubbing out.
They leaf through the shelves.
After the wind there was only one leaf left.
On the page a trail of tears, the stanzas stretched out.
An Excerpt from Listening to the Deep Song