The World as a Room

A blog on writing and ideas // by Libby Hart

Sunday, 13 November 2011

A room is, after all, a place where you hide from the wolves. That’s all any room is.

-- Jean Rhys

Posted by Libby Hart at Sunday, November 13, 2011

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Labels: Jean Rhys, Miscellaneous quotes

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Libby Hart: Libby Hart’s most recent collection of poetry, 'This Floating World' is published by Five Islands Press (2011) and was shortlisted for a Victorian Premier's Literary Award (CJ Dennis Prize for Poetry) and 'The Age' Book of the Year Awards (Dinny O'Hearn Poetry Prize). Her first collection, 'Fresh News from the Arctic' (2006) received the Anne Elder Award and was shortlisted for the Mary Gilmore Prize. She is a recipient of an Australia Council for the Arts residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig in County Monaghan, Ireland and a DJ O’Hearn Memorial Fellowship at The Australian Centre, University of Melbourne.

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theworldasaroom@gmail.com

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Five Poetry Journal
The World as a Room

About this blog

The world is a room. It is a balcony. It's the grass under our feet, the goosebumps on our skin. It's the north wind, singing over the Atlantic. It's a small apartment with noisy neighbours. It's a field of shy heifers, a tip of silence on their tongues. The world is a turtle dove, a northern fulmar sheltering from a storm. It's every wave on every shore, and every leaf on every tree. It's the roots that define us, the things that keep us guessing. The world is a slow air, a slide, a reel, a jig and a polka -- all rolled into one. It's when you're feeling fenced in, but you're dreaming of a big sky. It's don't sweat the small stuff, and the eureka moments. It's opposites attract, and great minds think alike. It's turning the lights down low, it's talking in the dark. It's when an ordinary moment becomes extraordinary. Because the world is what you make it.

Acknowledgements

The title of this blog gives respectful reference to Brendan Kennelly's beautiful poem, We Are Living, namely the second stanza: Your words are the only furniture I can remember / Your body the book that told me most. / If this room has a ghost / It will be your laughter in the frank dark / Revealing the world as a room / Loved only for those moments when / We touched the purely human. [Brendan Kennelly, 'We Are Living' from Familiar Strangers: New & Selected Poems 1960-2004 (Bloodaxe Books, 2004)]. Many thanks to Bloodaxe Books for allowing me to use these words for this blog. All images are credited and linked wherever possible. Please email theworldasaroom@gmail.com if one of your images is used and you wish it to be removed.

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