Sam Garvan

@garvansam.bsky.social

1828 Followers 2137 Following

Poet. Reader. Plums, raspberries, apricots. Recently in Asymptote, New Welsh Review, Finished Creatures, Cyphers. Troubadour Prize. Jt runner-up Keats-Shelley prize. He/him.

Invitation with address: 7 Trafalgar Road, Cambridge, CB4 1EU, and email address for arranging to see the exhibition: keatefamilyartstrust@gmail.com Plus beautiful image of blue and yellow speckled feather, and abstract yellow shapes on dark background.
Home Mysterious lonely apple tree on uninhabited Hebridean island baffles scientists This, I understand: the instinct to cling, at any cost, to the place you are rooted, to see another season through, though the others seed elsewhere; your own young move with tides and summer squalls. Even in this sedentary act you push the limit: winter becomes summer becomes winter and you are steadfast on your crag, your outcrop. You bear fruit for yourself; there is purity in solitude. No one hears your language, the shape of your limbs against a darkening sky. You question the need to grow against the wind. Despite what they say, there’s no mystery in simply holding on. But what is home if not the choice – over and over again – to stay?
Sometimes you have to take your own hand as though you were a lost child and bring yourself stumbling home over twisted ice. Whiteness drifts over your house. A page of warm light falls steady from the open door. Here is your bed, folded open. Lie down, lie down, let the blue snow cover you.
The Invention of Heaven by Dean Young The mind becomes a field of snow but then the snow melts and dandelions blink on and you can walk through them, your trousers plastered with dew. They're all waiting for you but first here's a booth where you can win a peacock feather for bursting a balloon, a man in huge stripes shouting about a boy who is half swan, the biggest pig in the world. Then you will pass tractors pulling other tractors, trees snagged with bright wrappers and then you will come to a river and then you will wash your face.
Two fungi, decurrent (is that the word?) gills, brown top, pale underside, chunky stalk. The rims curling upwards.
Soulful looking black dog, wearing a white cloth as a headress. (Not my photo - stolen off web.)
Lana Turner has collapsed! I was trotting along and suddenly it started raining and snowing and you said it was hailing but hailing hits you on the head hard so it was really snowing and raining and I was in such a hurry to meet you but the traffic was acting exactly like the sky and suddenly I see a headline LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED! there is no snow in Hollywood there is no rain in California I have been to lots of parties and acted perfectly disgraceful but I never actually collapsed oh Lana Turner we love you get up
small child and seated camel. both look delighted. not my photo.
Three sparrows flying against a gold background. Detail from a screen by Seiho Takeuchi
Andrew Wyeth - Adrift - a man lying down in a rowing boat, he seems asleep, there are no oars. The waves are small but there are a few white caps ...
The cover of Anne Berkeley's book, 'Object Permanence'. Blue sky. Green meadow grass and hedges. Half lost in the grass, a large, rusting, mysterious piece of farm machinery.
The cover of Cyphers issue 99, with the names of all the contributors
I am learning to abandon the world before it can abandon me. Already I have given up the moon and snow, closing my shades against the claims of white. And the world has taken my father, my friends. I have given up melodic lines of hills, moving to a flat, tuneless landscape. And every night I give my body up limb by limb, working upwards across bone, towards the heart. But morning comes with small reprieves of coffee and birdsong. A tree outside the window which was simply shadow moments ago takes back its branches twig by leafy twig. And as I take my body back the sun lays its warm muzzle on my lap as if to make amends.
Three pink knitted 'clangers' (remember them?), emerging from the burrows on their planet and all looking up and pointing/waving into the black sky
Small child and kneeling camel, in the middle of ? Mongolian steppes ? , both looking highly delighted ...
Photo showing a bear (a real bear, though unfortunately stuffed) standing up, carrying a tray with a small bowl of flowers on it
Roseate spoonbill in flight. Looks wonderfully like a ballooned out pale pink skirt in flight, with a pair of bird's feet and a long bill. Great to know that such a thing exists and is flying around like that ...
The poem 'Table' by Edip Cansever A man filled with the gladness of living Put his keys on the table, Put flowers in a copper bowl there. He put eggs and milk on the table. He put there the light that came in from the window. Sound of a bicycle, sound of a spinning wheel. The softness of bread and the weather he put there. On the table the man put Things that happened in his mind. What he wanted to do in life. He put that there. Those he loved, those he didn’t love, The man put them on the table too. Three times three make nine: The man put nine on the table. He was next to the window next to the sky; He reached out and placed on the table endlessness. So many days he had wanted to drink a beer! He put on the table the pouring of that beer. He placed there his sleep and his wakefulness; His hunger and his fullness he placed there. Now that’s what I call a table! It didn’t complain at all about the load. It wobbled once or twice, then stood firm. The man kept piling things on. Translated by Julia Clare Tillinghast & Richard Tillinghast
Before Summer Rain Suddenly, from all the green around you, something-you don't know what-has disappeared; you feel it creeping closer to the window, in total silence. From the nearby wood you hear the urgent whistling of a plover, reminding you of someone's Saint Jerome: so much solitude and passion come from that one voice, whose fierce request the downpour will grant. The walls, with their ancient portraits, glide away from us, cautiously, as though they weren't supposed to hear what we are saying. And reflected on the faded tapestries now; the chill, uncertain sunlight of those long childhood hours when you were so afraid.
The poem 'Rain' by Raymond Carver Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read. Fought against it for a minute. Then looked out the window at the rain. And gave over. Put myself entirely in the keep of this rainy morning. Would I live my life over again? Make the same unforgiveable mistakes? Yes, given half a chance. Yes.
Linda Pastan poem, Imaginary Conversation. You tell me to live each day as if it were my last. This is in the kitchen where before coffee I complain of the day ahead—that obstacle race of minutes and hours, grocery stores and doctors. But why the last? I ask. Why not live each day as if it were the first— all raw astonishment, Eve rubbing her eyes awake that first morning, the sun coming up like an ingénue in the east? You grind the coffee with the small roar of a mind trying to clear itself. I set the table, glance out the window where dew has baptized every living surface.
Alina Stefanescu's prose poem 'On Twilight'
Poem, 'I Am Learning to Abandon the World' by Linda Pastan I am learning to abandon the world before it can abandon me. Already I have given up the moon and snow, closing my shades against the claims of white. And the world has taken my father, my friends. I have given up melodic lines of hills, moving to a flat, tuneless landscape. And every night I give my body up limb by limb, working upwards across bone, towards the heart. But morning comes with small reprieves of coffee and birdsong. A tree outside the window which was simply shadow moments ago takes back its branches twig by leafy twig. And as I take my body back the sun lays its warm muzzle on my lap as if to make amends.
Ada Limon poem, Against Nostalgia: If I had known you were coming, back then, when I first thought love could be the thing to save me after all—if I had known, would I have still glued myself to the back of his motorcycle while we flew across the starless bridge over the East River to where I grew my first garden behind the wire fencing, in the concrete raised beds lined by ruby twilight roses? If I had known it would be you, who even then I liked to look at, across a room, always listening rigorously, a self-questioning look, the way your mouth was always your mouth, would I have climbed back on that bike again and again until even I was sick with fumes and the sticky seat too hot in the early fall? If I had known, would I have still made mistake after mistake until I had only the trunk of me left, stripped and nearly bare of leaves myself? If I had known, the truth is, I would have kneeled and said, Sooner, come to me sooner.
Painting of trees in autumn colours
Mary Szybist poem, 'The Lushness of It' The Lushness of It It’s not that the octopus wouldn’t love you— not that it wouldn’t reach for you with each of its tapering arms: you’d be as good as anyone, I think, to an octopus. But the creatures of the sea, like the sea, don’t think about themselves, or you. Keep on floating there, cradled, unable to burn. Abandon yourself to the sway, the ruffled eddies, abandon your heavy legs to the floating meadows of seaweed and feel the bloom of phytoplankton, spindrift, sea spray, barnacles. In the dark benthic realm, the slippery neckton glide over the abyssal plains: and as you float, you can feel that upwelling of cold, deep water touch the skin stretched over your spine. No, it’s not that the octopus wouldn’t love you. If it touched, if it tasted you, each of its three hearts would turn red. Will theologians of any confession refute me? Not the bluecap salmon. Not its dotted head.
The poem 'A Knock on the Door' by James Tate. They ask me if I’ve ever thought about the end of the world, and I say, “Come in, come in, let me give you some lunch, for God’s sake.” After a few bites it’s the afterlife they want to talk about. “Ouch,” I say, “did you see that grape leaf skeletonizer?” Then they’re talking about redemption and the chosen few sitting right by His side. “Doing what?” I ask. “Just sitting?” I am surrounded by burned up zombies. “Let’s have some lemon chiffon pie I bought yesterday at the 3 Dog Bakery.” But they want to talk about my soul. I’m getting drowsy and see butterflies everywhere. “Would you gentlemen like to take a nap, I know I would.” They stand and back away from me, out the door, walking toward my neighbors, a black cloud over their heads and they see nothing without end.
Poem 'Those Winter Sundays' by Robert Hayden Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he’d call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?
The poem 'Night Vision' by Josie George
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin poem, 'Interim Report to Paul: November'
The poem "Miss You" by Gabrielle Calvocoressi. Do not care if  you bring only your light body. Would just be so happy to sit at the table and talk about the menu. Miss you. Wish we could bet which chilis they’ll put on the cubes of tofu. Our favorite. Sometimes green. Sometimes red. Roasted we always thought. But so cold and fresh. How did they do it? Wish you could be here to talk about it like it was so important. Wish you could. Watched you on the screens as I was walking, as I was cooking. Wished you could get out of the hospital. Can’t bring myself to order our dish and eat it in the car. Miss you laughing. Miss you coming in from the cold or one too many meetings. Laughing. I’ll order already. I’ll order seven helpings, some dumplings, those cold yam noodles that you like. You can come in your light body or skeleton or be invisible I don’t even care. Know you have a long way to travel. Know I don’t even know if it’s long at all. Wish you could tell me. What you’re reading. If you’re reading. Miss you. I’m at the table in the back.
Poem 'Things' by Lisel Mueller
Poem 'The Expanding Universe' by Rebecca Elson
Poem 'The Square' by Jane Draycott
Picture of three clangers pointing out into space
Poem by Maggie Smith: Heart A child of, say, six knows you’re not the shape she’s learned to make by drawing half along a fold, cutting, then opening. Where do you open? Where do you carry your dead? There’s no locket for that—hinged, hanging on a chain that greens your throat. And the dead inside you, don’t you hear them breathing? You must have a hole they can press their gray lips to. If you open— when you open—will we find them folded inside? In what shape? I mean what cut shape is made whole by opening? I mean besides the heart.
The poem 'Thanksgiving'
A poem, in couplets, about an old dog walking upstairs. Here's the end: then he puts one thick blonde paw on the tread immediately above us, and waits for me to do the same.
African Jacana landing
"Poor Owd Oss" - a Christmas tradition in Yorkshire, England, where the poor old horse (someone dressed up) goes round all the pubs in the town. Or here, an indoor market.