Petra White Q&A on her poem ‘Woman and Dog’
Petra White talks about the genesis of her poem "Woman and Dog."
Petra White
Petra White Q&A on place
Petra White talks about the role of place in her poetry.
Petra White Q&A with advice to young writers
Petra White offers some advice to young writers.
Ode to Coleridge
On the toughness of the physical soul Feeling around in the human, as if inside a sack, soul fends for itself, fends off, prunes, cultivates, eliminates, makes itself up, says ‘is this right?’ (and tries to be reasonably consistent) tending itself, lurches like Sisyphus into forwardness, backwardness, urges itself to form a […]
Woman and Dog
A woman and a dog walked all day beside the non-moving canal. People who walk dogs displace themselves: the dog sniffs and leads, harnesses a human soul, spirit and flesh willing or not. It's human-dog eyes cradle the walkable world – a happy place – a brimming here-and-yet. The canal neither followed nor […]
Trampolining
The fattest eternity is childhood, minutes stuffed with waiting and the just-there world deferred to an afterlife of joy where magically we outgrow what could tell us what to do: we sat cross-legged on the floor, quiet as the glad-wrapped biscuits on the supper-table, a summer school night boiling over with nightmare prayers in […]
The Ecstacy
He is square in his suit again, the same man in the same package, striding into the present, meaning whatever a man can mean, a billion years of male shoulders, male hair, male eyes, shaking all that off, being only himself, secure in the tight shell of his otherness, glinting outwards and inwards, his hand […]
Ricketts Point
A slim girl playing by herself in the shallows, like someone who’s never been to the beach before and suddenly marvels at how the world tips open to broad deep space, not fearsome. Seawater cool as milk intimately swirling her. Sand hospitably absorbing and releasing her feet, her mounting dance of being, luminously alone on […]