{"id":4360,"date":"2016-03-04T14:19:21","date_gmt":"2016-03-04T14:19:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/?p=4360"},"modified":"2024-06-17T08:47:54","modified_gmt":"2024-06-17T08:47:54","slug":"sanctuary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/2016\/03\/04\/sanctuary\/","title":{"rendered":"Sanctuary by Kate White"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sanctuary\u00a0\u00a0 by Kate White
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’d like to be able to say this is an epiphany
\nbut it’s not. I want to press on home.<\/p>\n

I’m anointed by the light of the phone box,
\nlooking out on hard rain, the closed off-licence.<\/p>\n

It’s clean of cards and dry enough here. Only the faintest
\nsmell of piss. I wish I wanted to wait, stay, even.<\/p>\n

It could be my cell. Like a wayside shrine, here
\non the New North Road, cars wishing past, drivers,<\/p>\n

one hand on the wheel, crossing themselves,
\nas I shine out to them, invisible to myself.<\/p>\n

I admire the way this poem dances between the worlds of the medieval anchoress and the modern urban landscape ( I think this phone box is historically a bit earlier than now, sometime before we all got hold of mobile phones). I like the playful contrasts between the language of ‘epiphany’ and ‘anointed’ and that of the ‘closed off-licence’ and the lack of sex workers ‘cards’. I like the modesty of it saying it’s not an epiphany when it actually is. I like the way it reminds me of times when finding a phone box on a dark night, when lost, needing help, was a sudden beacon of help. I like how the poet turns the lit-up box into a nimbus of spiritual mystery \u2013 it’s not quite the ending of ‘Il Paradiso’, but it’s a corner of the same field. I like the directness and clear language, the instant accessibility of it. I like the precision of location, which is simultaneously general, the ‘New North Road’ \u2013 the one I remember is in Exeter, but you’ll know one near you. I like the way ‘cars wishing past’ ripples out as a phrase, exact description and then the implications of ‘wishing’ come rolling along: and there’s the nod to Bob Dylan in ‘hard rain’. Altogether an admirable poem I think.<\/p>\n

Michael Mackmin<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Image: E01 on Flickr<\/a>. Creative commons licence, Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I admire the way this poem dances between the worlds of the medieval anchoress and the modern urban landscape ( I think this phone box is historically a bit earlier than now, sometime before we all got hold of mobile phones). I like the playful contrasts between the language of ‘epiphany’ and ‘anointed’ and that of the ‘closed off-licence’ and the lack of sex workers ‘cards’…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4362,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4360"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11709,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4360\/revisions\/11709"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}