Lesley Harrison’s latest collection, Kitchen Music, turns north to the sea for inspiration. BooksfromScotland are delighted to share some of those poems with you.

Kitchen Music
By Lesley Harrison
Published by Carcanet

Weather Reports You
Vatnasafn / Library of Water, by Roni Horn, with interviews by Oddný Eir
Ævarsdóttir. Stykkishómlur, Iceland

i.

My favourite weather is a north-easterly blizzard. This feeling is
comfortable. I enjoy being in a breeze, or a drizzle out at sea.
The weather is the sea.

ii.

A north-easterly is usually our best weather. It is bright and
clear. The air is deep blue and fresh, like the good weather that
follows a good catch, or a good wedding. Every moment is a
new thing.

iii.

In summer, I get fed up with light. I feel full, over-satiated, like
being in a closed room. The sky is empty. You have to move
around. You have to be with other people.

iv.

The weather is part of my body. I shift my position in my chair
according to the weather. I feel fine in calm, foggy weather.
Then I can smell the sun. Talking about the weather is talking
about oneself

v.

There is no weather in dreams. In dreams we move like fish in
water, without resistance. When we wake up, we are sluggish.

vi.

It is a wonderful time of year when the darkness is coming. It is
when the sea starts moving. In August, when it gets dark at night,
it is as if I am growing up further back in time. You feel that
summer was a long time ago.

vii.

When it snows, the sky drops down to the village. This frightens
me a little. After a storm, or a death at sea, the wind might drop
and immediately it seems as if nothing had happened. Then
grief is uncomfortable.

viii.

After a very cold Spring followed by a few good days, you fill up
with a kind of joy. The world feels settled and empty.

ix.

The currents affect your dreams, as does the tide, and the moon.

x.

Weather is reflection and measure. Stories about the weather
create false memories, conditioned by time, by a certain blindness.
Our weather is always in the present. It is word-of-mouth.

Kitchen Music
New York, 2017

collage = REALITY
—Joseph Cornell

i.

the morning after
with its “back to life” feeling.
manhattan breakfast:

a restaurant of
silver grey driftwood –
a feeling of water.

ii.

outside the coffee shop
a young bird alighted –
treethrushsong

iii.

a gulf of rain,
and the city sinks an inch.

at Penn Station, the lush tyres of yellow taxis –
umbrellas of Cherbourg
in the subway crush.

iv.

chance encounters:
old back yards,
reflections of the sun through curtains

from the sidewalk, gleaming
the city market,
“Hey Jude” among

bees and melons
a steel bridge, the Hudson
blank between the walls.

a corner bar.
a girl in a window.

v.

Thursday at the arboretum:
cool green
the café kitchen window open

and sounds tunnel in
– song sparrows,
butterflies that churr

vi.

downtown evening:
the sky towers of Manhattan
dark green against a stark aqua sky

then home, the sea
a new north blue.

the chill early March breezes
a wild piano music.
nostalgia wiped clear

vii.

this morning
among the tidewrack:
azimuth, whale bone

shoes and twine, a tedium of
cartons, floats
varia, et cetera.

a day owl, almost blue.

viii.

couch dream evening
entre chien et loup,
a high angelic sunset

“the earth with yellow pears
and wild with roses”

ix.

ephemera:
what minute (infinitesimal)
living can be

Iceland Poppy
Victoria Street, Kirkwall

it is snowing.

in the silence
of this bright space

a tight bud
creaking

prehistoric
as delicate as birch

dark white,
rooting.

Kitchen Music by Lesley Harrison is published by Carcanet, priced £12.99.