{"id":286,"date":"2019-03-01T07:26:35","date_gmt":"2019-03-01T07:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/bridges\/?p=286"},"modified":"2019-03-01T18:24:21","modified_gmt":"2019-03-01T18:24:21","slug":"lydia-kennaway-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/bridges\/2019\/03\/01\/lydia-kennaway-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Lydia Kennaway"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Se\u00e1n Kiely<\/p><\/div>\n

\r\n\r\nForeign Object Damage Prevention Walk aboard an Aircraft Carrier\r\n<\/strong>from A History of Walking<\/em>\r\n\r\n\r\nWhen the sun has broken free of the horizon, before\r\nthe roaring day begins, we stand shoulder-to-shoulder,\r\none hundred bodies across the deck, port to starboard,\r\n\r\n\r\nheads bowed, and a long road to cover in a slow march.\r\nLater, the planes will come and go. It drills into your marrow,\r\nthe noise of jet engines. They\u2019d breathe in bottles, hammers,\r\n\r\n\r\nsuck up rags and bolts, greedy for anything left on deck\r\nif we let them. Once we saw a flash of gold against\r\nthe wide blue sky. Then the plane began to dive.\r\n\r\n\r\nFor days, we handled small objects \u2013\r\npen tops, wire offcuts, pennies \u2013\r\nwith a kind of fearful reverence. At night\r\n\r\n\r\nwe\u2019d dream the Walk, searching on a deck\r\nthat buckled and heaved or turned\r\nto water in the way of dreams.\r\n\r\n\r\nBut now it\u2019s morning, and we stand\r\nshoulder-to-shoulder from port\r\nto starboard. We bow our heads.\r\n\r\n\r\nAlways the Chaplain proposes inner prayer,\r\nletting our measured pace turn the wheels\r\nof meditation.\r\n\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And always I think Who\u2019s listening?\r\n<\/em>                       And always the words come.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
This poem was first published by Strix magazine, issue no. 4. Lydia Kennaway<\/strong>\u2019s pamphlet, A History of Walking, will be published by HappenStance in April 2019, from which she is going to read at the NCLA First Thursday this week. She is the 2017 winner of the Flambard Poetry Prize. Lydia\u2019s poems were shortlisted for the 2018 Bridport Prize, and longlisted in the 2018 Rialto Nature and Place Poetry Competition and (three times) in the National Poetry Competition.\u00a0 Other poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies including The Rialto and Any Change? Poetry in a Hostile Environment, edited by Ian Duhig (2018).<\/em><\/p>\n
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Foreign Object Damage Prevention Walk aboard an Aircraft Carrier from A History of Walking When the sun has broken free of the horizon, before the roaring day begins, we stand shoulder-to-shoulder, one hundred bodies across the deck, port to starboard, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7691,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-poetry","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/bridges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/bridges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/bridges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/bridges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7691"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/bridges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/bridges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":292,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/bridges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions\/292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/bridges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/bridges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/bridges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}