Tag: Gullkistan Center for Creativity

  • Poems by Michael G. Smith

    Poems by Michael G. Smith

     

    During the fall of 2019 Michael G. Smith was a writing resident at Gullkistan Center for Creativity (http://gullkistan.is/). Gullkistan is located in the Icelandic village of Laugarvatn on the western shore of Laugarvatn Lake with a view of the active volcano Hekla. Michael drafted the following poems during his residency. They are part of a longer manuscript he is working into a book. He hopes that the book would present an embedded foreigner’s experience of Iceland atypical to expectations, and concomitantly provide a window into how Iceland’s dynamic landscape informs his life experience.

    *

    Reykjavik Hostel List Poem

    after bar hopping
    the London psychology
    student and I trade
    navigating Kathmandu traffic
    and monastery stories
    in the quad bedroom
    we share
    as I sip green tea
    the Prague woman
    cooking rigatoni
    in the communal kitchen
    stirring the noodles
    bobbing up and
    down like glacial chips
    swimming in the lagoon
    at Jökulsárlón
    asks if I’ll show her
    a wolverine
    if she comes to Montana
    though I have never
    seen one myself
    after the Hindu from Bangalore
    who mastered structural
    engineering at UCLA
    and I compare
    California’s faults
    I tell him about golden leaves
    falling from the bodhi tree
    while meditating
    at the Great Awakening Temple
    in Bodh Gaya
    with monks and nuns
    from most continents on Earth
    volcanic Hekla dozing uneasily
    above all of our horizons


     

    Students and Teacher

    Hekla backlit from the east
    I flip through a history
    of Iceland
    Hekla the medievalists’
    Gateway to Hell
    Laugarvatn’s sulfurous fragrance
    not the devil’s doing
    what does anyone
    know about Heaven and Hell?
    no dinosaur fossils found
    in Iceland’s eighteen
    million-year-old rocky layers
    whooper swans lift
    off the lake
    a moment before
    a bevy of rain-slickered
    school children
    in groups of threes and fours
    jostle past the windows
    one with a lengthwise crack
    their ponchoed teacher
    who doubles as a host
    at the hot springs spa
    waving at me


     

    Chord Tangent Secant Take Two

    after a week
    reading my poems
    taped to the wall
    out loud
    the artist asks
    what does
    chord tangent secant
    mean?
    I say
    ice-bound
    tidal river
    puzzled
    she looks at me
    I say
    my Chinese elm bonsai
    yellows old leaves
    she says, so
    are you pointing
    towards the future?
    I say
    because the activity
    of writing poems
    is useless
    I can relax
    into it
    she laughs
    and says
    yes? say more
    I say
    yeah, shackled
    by the circular self
    we are blessed
    with nothing
    but possibility
    always a drip or two away
    from completion


     

    A Lonely American Writer is Counseled

    daylight shortening
    loneliness
    creeps in again
    and as is my way
    I search for a village cafe
    to drink coffee
    before dawn
    and write poems
    only to find myself
    escorted by the teacher
    cum spa host
    to Heradsskolin Guest House
    former school now
    hostel yoga studio bistro
    she shows me the library
    Optics and Their Applications
    Thurber and Cather peering
    from bookshelves
    the lake view from
    the café tables’ windows
    a waist-high radio
    tunable to Rome
    and universal analog
    calibrated voltmeters
    zeroed out
    for accurate readings
    Fox Trot by Joe Lobb
    and His Orchestra
    waiting to spin
    on its metal platter
    she cranks
    a Columbia Grafonala
    and says a quick dance
    before work but first
    Halldór Laxness wrote
    parts of Independent People
    within these warm walls
    an abode his protagonist
    farmer and sheep herder
    Bjartur of Summerhouses
    could not imagine
    or afford


     

    Enso

    viewed from a
    certain altitude
    complete
    incomplete Iceland
    an asymmetrical circle
    fractally growing
    and gnawing
    borders
    lives viewed as uneven
    their beginning
    and endpoints
    requiring selfless help
    gusts rocking
    the old hostel
    in seaside Vik
    latches broken
    its windows
    leaky
    these thoughts
    maybe fears
    wake me
    my enso
    always a drip or two away
    from completion


     

    About the Author

    Michael G. Smith is a chemist. His poems have been published in many literary journals. His books include No Small Things; The Dippers Do Their Part, a collaboration with Laura Young of haibun and katagami from their Shotpouch Cabin residency; and Flip Flop, a collection of haiku co-written with Miriam Sagan. His poem Disturbance Theory. Glacier was selected to be photographed and displayed in Antarctica by the Antarctic Poetry Exhibition (https://www.antarcticpoetry.com/) in early 2021.