The Only White Landscape

Derek Motion

The Only White Landscape
Format
Paperback
Publisher
Cordite Press Inc
Country
Australia
Published
1 January 2017
Pages
64
ISBN
9780975249246

The Only White Landscape

Derek Motion

The Only White Landscape shows the effort to think in time with the imperfection of language as it nudges into consciousness and out of order; as it turns into itself as if on a pin or because of some new patch of petrol-, Pantone-, mid-morning light. The poems are scenes of ambivalence and loss, moving between states of recollection and projection, regret and desire, clarity and obscurity. Like a break-up, or a film, or a dream, or a recipe, they occupy a temporality that appears like a future imagined in a past, and lamented as a present that crushes.

‘The Only White Landscape is an assembly point. Past instances of thought and memory have come together as directed when under threat. The swells of real-life changes underpinning the poetry are physical, social, geographic and romantic. But, that’s so usual: the attempt to find singularity in the ruptures - not meaning, not really. From loneliness to only-ness. Sometimes I run at night through the fields around my house and then sit on carpet to record the resulting language. 'I feel so lyrical,’ I remember thinking at one point, mid-manuscript. I’m always seeking recognition. I want a conversation to surround my personal thoughts. I want to influence ‘you’ - your actions and opinions. Poetry can and will measure up to somebody’s sincerity levels but then he / she still might not love you. All the feels laid bare, the words persisting as evidence of what you might have thought, felt. The Only White Landscape is a submersion in the past, a landscape stripped of comforting colour, a set piece refigured in post like a photograph, my choices of emphasis directing and deflecting your attention. It feels like an outcome. I hope the poems keep you just as long as you want to be kept.‘ - Derek Motion

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