Anthony Joseph, Sonnets for Albert, Spring & All

Club de lectura Spring & All: Sesión dedicada a Anthony Joseph, Sonnets for Albert (Ganador del T S Eliot Prize 2022).

Anthony Joseph is an award-winning Trinidad-born poet, novelist, academic and musician. He is the author of four poetry collections and three novels. In 2019, he was awarded a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship. His new collection Sonnets for Albert (Bloomsbury) won the 2022 T. S. Eliot Prize. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Goldsmiths, University of London, and is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at De Montfort University, Leicester.

Shame II

I was recording in St Anns and had one day free.
So I told my father I’d be back in December;
and he said, ‘December? No, I want to see
my son, Tony; we in August.’

Everything is symbolic in literature. The dust
at dry noon in Sam Boucaud, the small birds
within the emptiness of the cricket field. Heat
burning water into sound; tall jungle.

My father appeared through curtains, thin
with eyes that now saw past the limits of ours.
The impish swirl of his laughter was gone.
In the photographs I took that afternoon
he seemed to be leaning away, leaning as if
from life, from love, in shame.

(Sonnets for Albert, 2022, Bloomsbury)