The three poems featured here are ekphrastics, namely poems that respond to a work of art. The first references old age, the second the merits and demerits of determination, some might say stubbornness. The third, by the featured poet, is a response to Vermeer’s ‘Girl Reading a Book’.
The prose piece is a book review.
Two Rooms
© 2022 Terrie Ferman
In the first room of the gallery
the paintings were extraordinary
the work of an artist
whose eye and hand
had captured atmosphere
uncannily.
The paintings were full of emptiness.
How do you paint emptiness?
But he had.
Veilings of dust coated the landscape.
I’d been to those places
tasted that dust
and the conflicted solitude.
And emptiness.
I’d forgotten all that.
His pictures nudged that life alive again.
No sadness.
Visceral recognition.
The other room held colour
bold, slashing, vibrating.
And shapes
conventional in themselves
confusing in their alignment.
I searched for meaning
coherence, symbolism.
All eluded me.
Leaving the gallery, I commented to a guide:
‘You have two very different artists here.’
Flicker of a frown.
‘There’s only one artist in this exhibition.’
Curious, I re-strolled the gallery
and read the wall notes.
The dates explained it.
The ‘empty’ paintings
had been born decades earlier.
The abstracts were much more recent.
On my final way out, the guide
smiled, nodded
checked my new understanding.
She explained the artist’s change
from realism to abstract
as growth, an artistic evolution.
Silently, I demurred.
None of that.
The artist had got old.
Weakened hands had shrunk
his options.
Now, at 90,
he painted what he could.
Behind the words
This poem records my visit to a charming regional art gallery in Queensland. The contrasting exhibitions in the two rooms couldn’t have been more stark. For me, the diminution of artistic skills that accompanies age was obvious. For the young guide, the fact that the artist still taught art when in his nineties suggested the opposite.
The Last House
© 2023 Terrie Ferman
He didn’t give in.
He wouldn’t say ‘yes’
To the council’s importunings.
He stood his ground staunchly
As others caved around him.
The house was his castle
Though modest for sure.
He lived through the hassle
Of being harried and told
His house should be sold
To make room for a highway.
He resisted the pressure
Of neighbours who sold.
He stood firm, he stood strong
Till the council gave in
And built the road around him.
Now his house is an island
Lapped by four lanes of highway
Of racing pollution.
But –
He didn’t give in.
Behind the words
This poem responds to ‘The Last House’ by Brigid Cole-Adams (the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane). The painting shows a geometric representation of paddocks with a house situated in the middle. It evokes a feeling of isolation.
When viewing this painting, I was reminded of an equally isolated house in Brisbane (Queensland) many years ago. It seems that, in the construction of a new road, one house owner had held out when the council tried to resume the land. The house ended up by itself in a traffic island with cars having to navigate around it. I often wondered if the non-seller had regretted the decision.
Featured poet
Ann Liebert is a Brisbane-based poet.
Vermeer’s ‘Girl Reading a Letter by the Window’
(c) 2022, Ann Liebert
The air wasn't particularly fresh
By the window.
The sun wasn't very bright
By the window.
The rutted street threw
Waves of clatter upwards.
The rich brew of animals
The cries of the sellers
The shouts of the children
The calls of her mother
The paint and the turpentine.
Senseless to everything
But the letter.
Only the letter
Her secret letter
She read by the window.
Other: Book review
Snowdrops, AD Miller 2011
Review by Terrie Ferman © 2024
This absorbing novel is told in the first person by Nick Platt, the main character. It takes the form of a long letter to Nick’s British fiancé who is curious about his years in Moscow. While her interest is entirely reasonable, Nick is reluctant to open up but decides that if, in the near future, they are to make and possibly keep serious vows to each other, then his fiancé does have a right to know about that time in his life. But such is his anxiety around doing this that he avoids speaking to her personally, instead opting for a letter. That way, she won’t have to disguise any appalled reaction. From the outset, then, the reader expects to hear some things that are at least uncomfortable for Nick, if not worse.
As a British expat lawyer working in Russia during the 2000s, he was living a life that seemed fine as far as it went. He goes to work, he lives a life, he has one close male friend and is on casual speaking terms with an elderly neighbor.
There’s neither excitement nor tragedy in Nick’s life. Then suddenly excitement appears in the form of Masha whom he meets in the metro. Nick falls hard and fast for Masha. Her feelings are less clear. At times, she appears to be purely exploitative, yet there are moments when genuine affection seems possible. Or, is this simply Nick’s wishful thinking? The love/lust story is interwoven with big deals made in the world of finance and repeated apologetic requests for help from Nick’s elderly neighbour who’s trying to find a missing friend. His reactions to the requests show Nick as a well-intentioned person who would help if he could. He’s not uncaring.
He also seems to be honest in his business dealings. So, all round, the main character is a decent well-meaning human being. But is he? This is the crux of the book. Increasingly, Nick doubts his decency. Where does courage sit when confronted by lust? How often can one mute the insistent voice of conscience?
Whether the reader ultimately judges Nick to be weak or naïve or selfish or deluded, his judgment of himself is devastating. He comes to realise that he is not the person he thought he was, not the person he wanted to be. His failure to act, to listen to his doubts is his moral undoing. He may never live happily with himself again.
The moral weightiness of the story is reflected in the miserable, snow-blighted weather. It’s a morality tale, really, but not a preachy one.