Zoë Skoulding

 

CRÉTEIL

 
After Les Choux de Créteil by Gérard Grandval (1969-1974)
For Jesús Torres Garcia

 

it's the end of the 		         lilac line and bushes
blossom by the 		         cabbage buildings
zoom into 1960s 	    	         space clusters
on the outer ring 		         each moulded leaf

	hanging with potential ungrown
	gardens barely pushing above
	the concrete absent cascades
	of green down temple curves

where lives repeat 		      in rockets that
haven't taken off but	      stayed growing
with hope buried in 		      the cabbage fields
provisional grass		      roots waiting

	at the point where the city ex-
	plodes on contact with the sky
	its force field propels us into
	slow traffic the sun radiating
	
these days laced 		     together under 
a car's metal roof 		     a sound box pulsing
where everything 		     pushes out to the edges
like being human 		     as a slow explosion

	balanced on concrete stems 
	every balcony's a sleeping ear  
	turned up to the sky's blank 
	transmission of tomorrow

in rounded walls		     where fittings don't
adjust to curvature		     mould to life
that doesn't stack up	     in the circumference
out of reach but still		     traced by your fingers

 
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ZOË SKOULDING is a poet, translator, editor and critic. She has published four collections of poetry, most recently The Museum of Disappearing Sounds (Seren, 2013), shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, and Remains of a Future City (Seren, 2008). She has performed her work at many international festivals, often incorporating electronic sound in her readings as well as collaborating with musicians. Her monograph Contemporary Women’s Poetry and Urban Space: Experimental Cities was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2013, and she was editor of Poetry Wales 2008-2014. In 2014 she was a Laureate at Les Récollets, Paris, hosted by the Mairie de Paris and the Institut Français. She is Senior Lecturer in the School of English Literature at Bangor University.
 
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Read more work by Zoë Skoulding:

 
Author website
Poem in Blackbox Manifold
Poem in The Fortnightly Review