Fleet
About this book
In 1878, in London, a woman served a prison sentence for deserting two of her children, a charge she denied. Almost nothing else is known of her life or that of her husband, a dealer in 'foreign birds and curiosities', who was himself a migrant. The two children vanished from the record.
This is where Fleet begins, with elusive histories and lost voices. The title suggests imperial power, conquest, traffic in commodities (which in the nineteenth century included vast numbers of exotic birds). It is shadowed by other meanings: the fleeting glimpse and swift flight; floating memories, enigmatic and insistent.
Judith Willson's second book of poems was written during years when migration and displacement have become central facts of the human condition. The collection works outwards from found text - historical documents, archive materials - into other places and times. In the silences of such records, their erasures and omissions, are stories that haunt our present.
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Information
Table of contents
- Title Page
- Contents
- The Parrot-Keeperās Guide, by an Experienced Dealer
- The ornithology gallery
- West India Dock
- Bird-dealerās wife
- The London Cage
- A map of roads and navigable waters
- Required to appear
- Childrenās song (my father whistled to the river)
- The tune he heard on Vinegar Street
- Childrenās song (when my father spoke)
- The prisoner said
- A demonstration
- Eliza in the laundry
- Childrenās song (my father wore translated shoes)
- Women dancing in a circle
- I press my eye to a paper peepshow
- Eliza, old
- Childrenās song (two birds sat on a white stone)
- Disappearances
- Signature
- Writing backwards to the birdcage maker
- Haunting Eliza
- In the marsh country
- Southend
- Rotherhithe
- Either an eyepiece or a correcting lens
- The human voice from a distance
- In early photographs, busy streets appear deserted
- Transit circle
- Zugunruhe
- A map of the world
- A story
- Goldfinches
- Silver plating, gilding, restoration to new life
- Fincantieri
- About time
- Corset shop window in the East End
- Notes
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
- Also by Judith Willson
- Copyright