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Christopher Ringrose: Palmistry
Palmistry
About this book
From the author
Palmistry mainly comprises poems I’ve written since I moved to Australia in 2012. I’ve written poetry since I was a teenager, but moving Melbourne and writing (and reading in public) within its vibrant literary culture has made me feel more creative and productive than ever before. The chapbook does also contain some earlier poems written in England, including “A Winter Sunday with the Children Aged 3 and 5” which I rescued from the pages of a diary for 1976, just as I was about to throw it out!
I hope readers will find a variety of forms, subjects and styles here. Often a poem will begin with a single image, place, memory, phrase or event; at other times I do not know what the poem will be about – it’s just a feeling that something needs to be written, and I know that the soft scratching of my fountain pen on the poetry notebook will summon up what I wanted to explore. Often that something surprises me. I hope that readers will find surprises here, too. There are love poems to my wife Jill, who has always been my inspiration and my first reader, and to our children Georgia, Matthew and Joel.
The title of the collection comes from a poem of the same name about my dear brother Charlie, and our physical and emotional connection. The term “palmistry” also conjures up for me all those ineffable connections we have with the world. It links the intimate feel of our own hands and skin to the mysterious wider world of fate and life’s journey.
Palmistry mainly comprises poems I’ve written since I moved to Australia in 2012. I’ve written poetry since I was a teenager, but moving Melbourne and writing (and reading in public) within its vibrant literary culture has made me feel more creative and productive than ever before. The chapbook does also contain some earlier poems written in England, including “A Winter Sunday with the Children Aged 3 and 5” which I rescued from the pages of a diary for 1976, just as I was about to throw it out!
I hope readers will find a variety of forms, subjects and styles here. Often a poem will begin with a single image, place, memory, phrase or event; at other times I do not know what the poem will be about – it’s just a feeling that something needs to be written, and I know that the soft scratching of my fountain pen on the poetry notebook will summon up what I wanted to explore. Often that something surprises me. I hope that readers will find surprises here, too. There are love poems to my wife Jill, who has always been my inspiration and my first reader, and to our children Georgia, Matthew and Joel.
The title of the collection comes from a poem of the same name about my dear brother Charlie, and our physical and emotional connection. The term “palmistry” also conjures up for me all those ineffable connections we have with the world. It links the intimate feel of our own hands and skin to the mysterious wider world of fate and life’s journey.
Christopher Ringrose
From the book
“The sunlight stared
through the bedroom window.
So the mirrored creases
of our life lines touched –
the one a little shorter
than the other.”
“The sunlight stared
through the bedroom window.
So the mirrored creases
of our life lines touched –
the one a little shorter
than the other.”
From 'Palmistry'
Christopher Ringrose
Biography
Christopher Ringrose
has lived and worked in France, Canada and the UK, and is now based in the Melbourne suburb of Newport. He writes poetry and fiction, and co-edits the Journal of Postcolonial Writing and the book series Studies in World Literature for Ibidem/Columbia University Press.
His poetry has won the Peterloo Prize in the UK, the Other Voices Prize in Canada and the 2014 Poetica Christi Prize in Australia, and been published in Fiddlehead, The Human World, Australis, The Mozzie, Poetry Monash, Coolabah, The South Circular, the 2018 ANU Prize Anthology and Award-Winning Australian Poetry.
His translations from Spanish of the poems of Ricardo Güiraldes appeared in The Laurel Review (Missouri State University) in 2018.
Chris’s poetry about Melbourne was chosen for projection in Krakow, Poland, as part of UNESCO’s “Cities of Literature” celebrations. His fiction was included to the Melbourne Subjective collection (2014) and in the microfiction anthology Flashing the Square (2014).
He is the guitarist in the Williamstown-based trio Trinity.
Chris’s poetry website is www.cringrose.com
His poetry has won the Peterloo Prize in the UK, the Other Voices Prize in Canada and the 2014 Poetica Christi Prize in Australia, and been published in Fiddlehead, The Human World, Australis, The Mozzie, Poetry Monash, Coolabah, The South Circular, the 2018 ANU Prize Anthology and Award-Winning Australian Poetry.
His translations from Spanish of the poems of Ricardo Güiraldes appeared in The Laurel Review (Missouri State University) in 2018.
Chris’s poetry about Melbourne was chosen for projection in Krakow, Poland, as part of UNESCO’s “Cities of Literature” celebrations. His fiction was included to the Melbourne Subjective collection (2014) and in the microfiction anthology Flashing the Square (2014).
He is the guitarist in the Williamstown-based trio Trinity.
Chris’s poetry website is www.cringrose.com