Taking Books for a Walk: A Stanza Poetry Festival Workshop

How might we take a book for a walk, let the book talk to, even change, how we think about ourselves and the world? 

Read two creative responses to Daniel Sluman’s poetry collection, Single Window.

‘space poem’ by Dr Antje Bothin

A symphony of life
The world below my feet

Space

Reflections in water, shadows of existence
A cold hand touches your heart.

A spring evening closes its eyes
The day sleeps, night begins.

OF WORD YET NOT[i] by Angela Gardner

I step into the poem as I step into a mirror enlarging the space 
with depth behind the polished plane of itself. This could be another, 
other world. And the lightest touch, sex of course, the soft undergrowth 
of sheets and towels and carpet, the unexpected hazards 
of plates left on the floor, piles of books. A glade lit with just one stream 
of light and the sky curtained with clouds so distant I could not step 
out into the light again and be whole. 
I watch the you in that unused 
space between perception and cold hard silvered reality. Because this 
is the body, possibility. In each indented line a finger-stroke on skin
I feel both presence and absence, a distance and its closing.
The many pairs of opposites, the many interiors, the room, the interior 
self, the unseen capable of lifting then shifting around object and field. 
The mirrored watching not seeing. Otherness I occasionally glance at. 
A wariness in that choice that leaves the body unconverted, constant 
even though it has become more than one.

[i] After Daniel Sluman’s Single Window