Mots by Rebecca Gethin

 

 


 

 

Rebecca Gethin lives on Dartmoor in Devon. In 2017 two pamphlets were published: A Sprig of Rowan by Three Drops Press and All the Time in the World by Cinnamon Press who published an earlier collection and two novels. She has been a Hawthornden Fellow. In 2018 she jointly won the Coast to Coast Pamphlet competition and has been awarded a writing residency at Brisons Veor.    

www.rebeccagethin.wordpress.com  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sound artist: Eliza Lomas

 

 

 

We needed to name

what we hadn’t found words for…

wrote burnished brass, blood-vein, lead belle.

They came to us like missives from ourselves.

 

Their attraction to lights (mistaken for moon)

is what erased them

in their thousands 

clouded magpie, lute string, hebrew character.

 

The smallest need a microscope

to tell them apart,

and can only be spoken of in Latin

cryptoblabes bistriga, phycita robrella.   

 

Now that they’ve been pinned

to illustrations

we’ll maybe recall

the meanings of the old words 

 

by the hieroglyphs on their wings

even as they vanish, year

by year, word by

word – engrailed, merveille du jour. 

 

 

Rebecca Gethin

 

‘Mots’ is from Rebecca’s new collection Vanishings (Palewell Press, 2020).  

 

    

 

Kujai by Rebecca Gethin

In the Siberian taiga by Rebecca Gethin

Overlooked by Rebecca Gethin

A charm by Rebecca Gethin

Stories

Poems