Tuesday 25 August 2015

Two Mediterranean Island Poems by John Fuller; Rhodes; Corsica; Edward Lear




Peasant woman: Rhodes (Poetry Magazine, December 1961)

Edward Lear in Corsica (New Selected Poems: 1983-2008)

Two excerpts

"I shall draw every day what's before me.
My spirit will put up a fight.
Not a thing on this island could bore me.
I shall map the behaviour of light...

And then, when the starlight is silent
Above the still murmurous sea,
I shall know I belong to this island
And this island belongs to me."


About John Fuller

More, with bibliography


Postscript

In my chapter in "Tourism, Travel and Identity", I write about the word peasant (and the 'tourist gaze', in relation to the island of Corfu):

'It is worth asking when the word "peasant" starts to drop out of the twentieth- century tourist, travel and foreign residence literature.'






No comments:

Post a Comment