Quennets

Philip Terry

• Publisher: Carcanet Poetry
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781784102685
• eBook ISBN:
  9781784102692
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

The poetic form used in these pages is one invented by Raymond Queneau in his 1975 book Morale élémentaire; it has come to be called the "quennet", after its inventor, as it has one more line than a sonnet. The three sequences which make up this collection experiment with psychogeographical quennets inspired by walking around the Essex estuary and the Berlin Wall Trail, with the final sequence retracing the steps of W.G. Sebald through Suffolk.

ELEMENTARY ESTUARIES

Blue buoy	Untampered simile Grey water	Black buoy
Still creek	White knight Red rubble	Cold stream
Grey sky	Yellow contamination Light breeze	Blue sheep
	Birds silhouetted on the mudflats lights on the Colne
Still buoy	Outstretched branches Icy pool	Cold sheep

Deserted paddock	Crunching gravel Azure sky	Distant beach-huts
Retreating sheep	Anchored vessel Flapping page	Sharpening wind
Uncertain seagull	Chiaroscuro clouds Flapping crow	Withering rosehip
	A shadow points across oyster beds A lone steeple marks the opposite shore
Retreating clouds	Crunching sheep Azure sky	Chiaroscuro beach-huts

Lone redshank	Lean sparrowhawk Vandalised sign	Lone duck
White horse	Green armadillo Dancing teasels	Startled pheasant
Burnt-out car	Decoy wall Vandalised sign	Distant rumble
	A dense wall of white masts guards the marina Pikes of middle England
Decoy duck	Green armadillo Inaccessible sign	Burnt-out pheasant

Red Andros	Red Charmer Red Crusader	Red Camelot
White Siskin	White Shadowfax White Panacea	Wh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Elementary Estuaries
• Mauerweg
• Waterlog
• Author’s Note
• Copyright