The Alchemist's Daughter: Cast Iron Poetry - Couverture souple

Murray, Sophia Isabella

Couverture souple

ISBN 13 : 9798356969621

Editeur : Independently published, 2022

Synopsis

When I first met Sophia, she smiled with her eyebrows raised, reddish blonde curls around her Cheshire smile. “I thought you’d be tall!” she laughed.
We were immediate friends. While I am in fact inwardly 10 feet tall and bulletproof, the truth is the bulletproof vest of me is squeezed into 5’2” good girl who “loves horses and America, too.”
We had met team teaching an online course, Rosie the Riveter hovering on the wall behind me; Sophia’s grey-nosed dog Suzie punctuating post-modern poetry with her barks and stretches. We were a dream team, finding friendship in a time of Covid.
What I learned slowly but intensely about the writer of this collection over the last two years is this: She is the tall one. A humble giant.
Since that day we met, her words regularly launch me flailing across the ether into deep, cold rivers and then grab me by the shirt front and rattle every cage I have ever hidden in.
I have worked in education in three countries across three decades with students from more than 30 different nations and I have never met an educator who connected as empathically with students.
Sophia is an observer of life and she has eyes that see the unseen. You’d think that she had x-ray vision or psychic powers and, while she probably possesses both, her tools are simple. No crystal balls or gleaming keyboards but instead a campervan office in her driveway named Arthur, his wheels long hidden by overgrown patches of grass, scraps of paper and the nearest pen available.
Inside this makeshift office fringed with hippie beads and feminist mantras, the work in these pages came to life. One word at a time. At night, in the early morning, after long naps and through late nights, written to the rhythm of the relentless Northumberland rain, by hands warmed by hand knit fingerless gloves in a place heated by one single kettle on a square of Formica. Sophia’s words are simple and profound, like nearly everything about her.
She doesn’t announce herself or her talent but don’t be fooled. Hers is the voice rising up in perfect time to point us all back to ourselves out of the ashes of Covid, conservative politics, and broken economies. Within minutes of meeting, she will know you. She will have noticed the slant of your smile from across the hall, the colour of your shoes, the way you accentuate a point in a higher pitch. And more than that, you will feel seen in these pages. In a time of isolation, you will feel seen and known and may it be a relief.
Emily Dickinson said, “If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”
I suggest you get yourself a helmet and a good spot by the fireplace before you turn the page. Sophia Murray has the keys to your cage.
Kim Braschko Hoelterhoff

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Independently published
• Date d'édition: 2022
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 13: 9798356969621
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 63
• Éditeur: Outterside Nic
• Coordonnées du fabricant: Manufactured by Amazon on behalf of the author; https://www.amazon.fr/hz/contact-us; ; c/o Amazon Media EU S.à.r.l., 38 Avenue John F. Kennedy; Luxembourg; L-1855; Luxembourg