Following her poetry collection of home thoughts from abroad, The Last Woman Born on the Island, Vagabond Voices is very pleased to publish this prolific poet’s latest collection, Things That Fruit in Darkness. As the title suggests, Sharon Black examines here the challenges we encounter in life and our resilience to them, demonstrating the breadth of her subject matter from one body of work to another.

These poems uncover the hidden worlds of nature and of the human heart. Black explores how these two realms reflect each other and what we can learn from this. Poems about the environment portray sheep, rain, types of soil, marine snow, mountains and a Hebridean apple tree that has been growing alone on a cliff face since the Ice Age – all held together by poems about lichen, which is not actually an organism but a relationship within a hybrid colony of bacteria, algae and fungi. The symbiosis of the lichen relationship runs quietly throughout the book: the ways in which we relate to each other, to ourselves and to our bodies: fragile and yet defiantly resistant.

“With an assured handling of the poetic line, and a unique approach to imagery, Sharon Black’s work interrogates the link between our emotional and physical landscapes. At the heart of this work is the conviction that humans are part of the natural world, and that poetry can bring into focus our deep connection to it.” – Kim Moore

“I hold my pen like a twig of dynamite’ – with fierce tenderness, Sharon Black examines the difficult forces driving life and its many forms of separation. From teenage girls as paper lanterns to lichen inscribing headstones, from dormice hibernating in hedgerows to the unravelling of a marriage, Black quietly attunes to small destructions and creations around us, giving voice to a quotidian frequency of grief and intimacy.” – Kit Fan

Excerpts from Things That Fruit in Darkness

Canary          

What makes you special is your thirst           
for oxygen, all that fresh O2 required
for flight, extra air sacs, the network

of your bronchi as delicate as lace,
a high note dropping to the dark heart
of the coalface, your trill a litmus test […]

Dinger, short for Shrodinger

My cat is an oracle, a quiet master of the lounge.

He insinuates great wisdom in his black velvet peacoat,

white silk cravat grazing the floor. All four legs

are tucked underneath so he occupies the rug

like a time bomb. His prophecies are spot on – […]

Ever After

I’m convinced he would like a quiet wife.

One who would sit on her chair and eat granola and sip carrot juice

wearing a ring on only her wedding finger.

How peaceful to be concerned by nothing more than

juice, dried fruits and nuts, and natural yoghurt!

The mind like a quiet seed in the dark. […]

I am writing a book about fire

I am writing a book about fire

because there are so many types and

I want to know them all:

the thin blue of the Bunsen burner,

orange fist of a struck match,

or a body deep in snow, fevered

by avalanche or white-out – […]

Ode to My Heart Valve

Busy little hammer on your block of wood,

dark wine setting the house on fire,

how diligently you work, how tirelessly,

what scat attention I have given you

till now, unveiled – ba-boom –

inside your tiny shed on a screen before

surgery that will slow you almost to standstill.  […]

You left me

a rusty key for the cabin. The website said

dunk it in a paste, bicarbonate of soda,

let it sit, take a toothbrush to the stains,

gently rub it clean. It’s in the kitchen, soaking

in a blue espresso cup, wet grains scouring the rust. [...]