Full Description
The Hopeful Hat is Carole Satyamurti's last collection. She was preparing these poems for publication at the time of her death, and left the manuscript in an advanced state of readiness. The sequencing of the poems, and the sections they are grouped in, had already been decided by her.
These late poems are informed by Satyamurti's keen eye for social injustice and, equally, by the breadth of her compassion. Poignantly, they are also her nuanced poetic response to having her voice box removed following a diagnosis of laryngeal cancer. The poems' formal accomplishment is carried lightly; characteristically, it is this light touch that enables Satyamurti to move so deeply. Clear-eyed in the face of her own mortality, she produced a series of courageous poems that are, as Carol Ann Duffy said of her work, 'laced with the hard stuff'. They are also graced with Satyamurti's unique and subtle wit.
The preface by the poet's daughter, Emma Satyamurti, places this collection in the larger context of four decades of published work, and provides an illuminating insight into the poems gathered together here.
Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
Contents
7 Foreword by Emma Satyamurti
10 Acknowledgements
I
13 The Hopeful Hat
14 Cans
15 How to Wash Dishes on the Eightfold Path
16 You Could Say
17 Obituary
19 Inheritance
20 Wednesday Again
21 New York
22 Easter
23 All that Is Solid Melts into Air
II
27 Voicing the Void
28 New Year on T14
29 Glossal
30 Sea Change
31 Necklace of Wasps
32 Mother Tongue
33 Overtones
III
37 Requiem for a Death Foretold
38 Small Change
39 Paper Boat
40 Vyasa's Gift
41 Hold On
42 The Climate Game
43 War Rhyme
44 Grand
IV
47 Debrief
48 Ought
49 Sight Reading
50 Succulent
52 Solitude
53 Shoreline
54 Le moment juste
55 It Turns Out
56 Happening
57 Less than Beautiful
58 April
59 Memento Mori
60 Endurance
61 Logically
62 Solid
