Talking Down The Clock is Seamus Cashman's fifth volume of poetry. It follows his 2015 ekphrastic book-length poem, The Sistine Gaze, from which this following quotation is taken:
"We are lovers of the earth, not its spouses bound or bought. We are siblings of the stars, sating history's well. Lovers live in beauty's orbit, bypassing time. We change words to love all over again; we mould our shadows with pigments; we make alternatives." (Verse 130, The Sistine Gaze)
Cashman Appreciated that TIME was the key challenge, and ventured two poetic sequences, intending to follow where they might lead. These sequences, 'Notebook Exits' and 'Daily Breaks', find time becoming a circus master and cracking the whip daily. Between these sequences are poems for young readersm and lyrics of people, places and sorrow each reflecting Palestine's endurance.
In his early collections there was a focis on village life and personal mythologies, the poet found 'fire crackling faggots / at my feet / I inhaled it's fragrance / and forgave myself. / I still could see.'. Now he seeks within, threading the ordinary through the abstract, linking the human via buttonholes of experience, philosophy and the uncertain, clearly enjoying what is encountered enroute. He relishes experiment, as in 'To The Naked Women In The Far Window', 'Be Still', 'Owl', 'Composition', 'Fractalities', 'Catastrophe Turnings' and others.
This collection's title poem is a spiral of excitement and image, leading readers through time's impositions and confusions – seeking to seize and to size it, facing the impossibility of ignoring it. We taste how to 'Just Be' as we observe time abseiling life within us to its own rhythms.
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Audiobook recorded by Adam Shanahan, Dublin, Ireland.
