Libation by Earl Livings
If there is one word that unites this collection it is longing – which edges into poems that reconcile science and spiritual paganism, reassess the isolation of childhood and even those that celebrate the natural world. This yearning for a bone-deep knowing is perfectly suited to Livings’s measured lyricism which, while rooted in tradition, can, with equal ease, branch into a more playful mode informed, always, with the twin preoccupations of science and history.
Catherine Bateson
The context for the human journey, Libation seems to say, is the widest one possible: that of deep space and time … On the way, the poet pays deep respect to the earth’s traditional cultures, rites and rituals, re-discovered and affirmed in a direct, experiential and often visceral way, and within specific languages … On a more personal level, several poems confront then stare down death and tragedy, aided by a vital wisdom: namely, the will to life found in all living things, including the many interesting creatures with which we share our lives and little planet …
John Jenkins
Read the title poem
To the earth my ancestors
Offered the best or the first—
Hindquarter, sheaf of wheat, blood—
Respect for those spirits felt
In tree, stream, stone, mystery:
How and why sun and moon dance,
How creatures and crops follow
The seasons, where the dead go.
In my childhood, taught and blessed
By revelation dogma,
I gave thanks to that one god
I soon judged didn’t exist,
The bounty at our table
Not his to bestow, but ours—
The marvel of jump-stump ploughs,
The charge of superphosphates,
The chain gears in abattoirs—
Man’s inventions helping man.
This full moon night I open
A bottle of Welsh whisky,
Pour some on the rooted earth
Of our apple tree, listen
To the wind jostle the leaves
Of my thoughts. I have watched man
Land on the moon and track signs
For alpha and omega
In the folds of particles
And the spiral attractions
Of galaxies, flowers, shells.
Have heard reasons for murder
In common streets, holy sites,
The control of hierarchies.
Have felt the chaos designs
Of weather and human touch.
Though I can never be sure
Of anything, life itself
A mask out of mystery,
I have once or twice found grace
In meditation and out
Of the corner of an eye,
In forest, at sea-shore,
With lover or new-born,
A scintillation, a keen trace,
Unplucked string resonating
To a distant rare music,
One part ceremony, one part dance,
Presence that encourages
And deserves honour, some chance
For alliance—planet, self,
Winds that rattle, disappear.
Reviews
Jenny Henty
Closing Earl Livings’s latest book of poems, Libation, felt like folding up a precious letter: one that revealed a master’s erudite understanding of life, the universe and everything with insight, intelligence and compassion…
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Nimue Brown
Libation is a beautiful collection by Earl Livings – mostly poetry and some poetic prose. The writing conveys a sensual experience of the physical world that I think any Pagan or Druid could connect with. As someone…
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Launch Speech by Alex Skovron
I frequently begin a launch speech by saying something about my connection with the launchee. This occasion will be no exception. However, there is a slight question-mark as to when exactly Earl Livings and I first met. We seem to agree that it must have happened at the poetry readings in the Lower Town Hall at Hawthorn, which we both attended from the late 1980s into the mid ’90s. We even did a live three-way collaboration there with the composer Roger Alsop in an event featuring some of our poetry set to music in electronic, computer-generated form! So this poet and I do go back a fair way.
And this poet is a man of many parts…
Read the full speech here
Further Than Night by Earl Livings
This long-awaited first collection has been crafter with patience and the insights of unfolding experience. The poems reveal an imagination which, while grappling with the enduring paradoxes of the emotions, the diurnal round and the interior journey, is attuned to wider currents – seasonal, cyclical, elemental – which can place our concerns in such humbling perspective. In his exploration of time, eros, language, the rhetorics of past and future, and the delicacy of the apprehended moment, Livings circles the regions that slant across the familiar cadences of day, or lie just beyond the compass of night.
Alex Skovron
Unfortunately, this book is out of print. I do have a small number of copies, so a interested person can contact me if they wish to buy a copy.
Read the title poem
Following a dream-script of loss,
I climb to the top slope of the universe,
(Where behind me gods on white steeds
Canter across the denuded world),
Begin the slalom skate of a question,
Jumping solar systems like puddles,
Gliding around spinning-top galaxies,
Speed-sliding across empty space
To the street corner edge of the cosmos
Where wait a man whose secret name
Is not God, his considerate wife,
Their lustrous daughter (who kisses well),
And the precipice-plunge into bare water.
They are the shapers of all things
Our telescopes will soon see,
But are weary and forsaken,
Having come this way
Before naming was invented.
I squeeze water between hands,
Concentrate on nothing but poise,
Watch light radiate and thicken
Till I hold a golden apple
That the wife shows me how
To twist into quasar slices
I drop at the water’s first edge.
There is nothing to talk about
But the infinite pools above our heads
And the giving of names.
Soon I dive and swim beyond
The lowering sea, twist like a dolphin
Basking in gold-tinted auroras,
Till weight reminds me to breathe
And I emerge with unblinking eyes,
Salt and words still on my lips,
Awaiting dreams that seek new names
And water smouldering with stars.
