Taken

By Geoff Kemp

The narrators in Taken seem to be constantly hovering between different worlds: dream and reality, despair and enlightenment, love and detachment. On the one hand, the collection is a narrative: the use of a dramatic three-act structure bears this out. Taken begins with evocations of a troubled childhood and follows their consequences to a final resolution. On the other hand, Taken suggests that life is an endlessly unfolding cycle.

Like any drama, the forward momentum is driven by conflict. The hard realism of some poems is contradicted by the surreal qualities of others. Moments of enlightenment sit alongside moments of doubt. Epiphany is balanced by a cosmic view of time. And like any cycle, the arrangement of the poems, and many of the poems themselves, repeat and return to the same concerns. The spiritual predicament that emerges from the collection is deeply personal, concise, unflinching. The poems are accessible but offer no easy answers. To read this collection from start to finish is to undertake a journey that circles slowly but relentlessly towards healing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Aug 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503507173

Geoff Kemp

Geoff Kemp grew up on a farm in South Australia’s midnorth. Following stints of farm, factory, and clerical work, he completed an arts degree at Adelaide University and has spent the past thirty-three years teaching high school drama and English. He has taught in outback and rural locations and, in recent years, in Adelaide. Geoff has been writing poetry since his early twenties. He has been a regular at Adelaide’s iconic Friendly Street readings, and was one of three poets selected for Friendly Street poets’ first New Poets series. He was the inaugural winner of the SA Writers’ Centre/Seaview Press poetry prize that saw the publication of the collection Alfa at Midnight. Geoff has had poems published in Words and Visions, Muse, the Australian Writers’ Journal, Northern Perspective, Studio, and Sidewalk. He has performed his poetry on radio and recently at Slam Poetry venues.

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 by Geoff Kemp.

Cover design by Colin Rogers

Thanks to Rob Johnson, Rob de Kok, and

Gaetano Aiello for editing work and advice.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-5035-0718-0

                eBook              978-1-5035-0717-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 10/07/2015

Xlibris

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Contents

ACT ONE – TAKEN

Taken

Alas the children

father

mother

Mid north memoir

Freedom

Dream

The cold war

Outland

1975

The disciple

Faith

To

The cape

Explorer

The road

Bottom end

ACT TWO – INSIDE

Angel

In the garden

If

Heart

Storms

Ithaca

Night shade

Faith

Mermaid

Hamlet

Wind

History

Soul

Eco-sonnet

Titan

Explorer

The road

life

Night-drums

ACT THREE – THE BUILDER

Ant

Tuesday

The salmon gum

Going

‘Big Bend’ on the River Murray

Enlightenment

Faith

Water

Jung and yang

Wormhole

A day

Stones

Archaeology

9/11

Interesting times

Cathedrals

Epochraphy

Sainted

Café

She

Love-sonnet

Harry

Love letter

The crusader’s dream

Projection or recognition,

The pianist

Light

Explorer

August

mother

father

Requiem for Sam

The road

The builder

ACT ONE

TAKEN

A paddock of dry grass: like a Dali painting the horizons are visible but infinitely distant. At stage left a farm house, a collection of sheds, three silos, and a track climbing to a concrete tank. To the right, a range of navy blue hills. Ahead the plain stretches endlessly to meet a cloudless sky.

A child stands in the centre of the paddock. An aeroplane at cruising altitude yet so enormous that all of its mechanical features are visible is at the zenith of the vast sky. At first the plane is a DC-6B, banking to port. Later it will morph into a Boeing 747 in a nose-down attitude, with parts of the tail and wing tip shearing off from the aerodynamic forces involved. In the end it will become an A-380 crashing and exploding close to the helpless child. All the while his face is frozen in fear, as if he has seen this terrifying scene