When Embers Dance

Poetry of witness can come from other than battlefield trenches, blood and bombs. Katherine Seppings’ chapbook begins with horrific climate, both a heatwave and a firestorm:

When embers dance wildest,

enter vulnerable gaps, press against,

up, down, under, into the heart of homes

 

when a mother picks burning cinders

from her children’s hair

forces them screaming into the car ...  ("Firestorm", 2)

As heat and fire take over, all moisture disappears, and all life suffers from the drought. A roan mare, trapped for hours, is dragged to safety ... but only for a while.

Then, there were no words left

to explain the endless searing sun

or why she couldn’t stand. [...]

Tears, silent as the lack of rain, fell

until I knew how it felt

to reach the end, tethered.       ("The Drought", 5)

The poems move on, taking in more of the animal world (sheep in "Animal Liberation", 8-9) and geographical space ("Avebury", 11).

But it is not all a matter of temperature or climate. "Seville" brings people back into the equation (the kindness of strangers, when “All I could say was ‘gracias’”, 12) , followed by "Boat People" (“Who would come in a boat to these shores / girt by shark nets?”, 13).

By these two poems, presented one after the other, we are reminded that poetry of witness is a poetry of tension and of intolerable contrasts, not only wet versus dry but also what we pretend versus what we do:

we still need laws to end slavery

exploitation rationality

racism, sexism obscenity

hating each other insanity   ("Human Catastrophe", 15)

And at even closer quarters,

No one hears my shallow breathing

fear of taking a deep breath, existing.

 

Out in the world they think I am shy.    ("Family Violence", 17)

We are given a bit of hope by the possibility of faith:

Faith was a sixpence

wrapped in the corner of my handkerchief

 

[...]

 

Faith came to me

in the confetti of plum blossom,

 

[...]

 

Faith had taken root in the body of earth.  ("Faith", 18)

But faith here comes in very small pieces and at best is only a root, not a whole tree big enough to shelter under. We hope, and we have faith – and we write poems as we wander in wasted lands:

This place

cannot be named

that sets fire to the past

in need of light.

 

[...]

 

This landscape of truth

lava-flowed on journeys

through blood-kin conflict

across borders, toward tenderness

where I am bound

 

[...]

 

for the home

that does not break.   ("Where Poetry Resides", 23-24)

Although this is Seppings’ first poetry collection, she has published poems widely and is an accomplished photographer. Her website, www.katherineseppings.com, gives ample and vivid evidence to her commitment as a witness – not only with photographs, but also with words, as this chapbook so ably shows.