Angela Gardner: Views of the Hudson
Published July 2009
Paperback, 80pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £8.95 / $15
ISBN 9781848610804
Download a sampler PDF of work from this book.
Before I started writing Views of the Hudson I
had been thinking about the intoxication and dangers of believing in Promised
Lands. This probably stems from my experience as a migrant who constantly
explores ideas of belonging and displacement. These ideas then led me to
think about the discovery of America and about how it had been described
as a New World Utopia. Later I read the King James Bible version of the Psalms—a
text whose translation was contemporary with the settlement of America and
whose longing for the promised land express these same themes. Then on a
Churchill Fellowship visit to New York City in 2008, I was able to wander,
day and night, the Avenues, the grubby back streets and to ride on subways
and buses taking it all in. When I started writing I realized that what I
wanted to recreate in poetry was the flood of images that results from living
in an overcrowded information-rich city.
Reading a text contemporaneous with the discovery of the Americas, such as
the King James Bible, gave Views of the Hudson a very human first person
voice of wonder, longing and despair. But its subject came from my immediate
and personal view of the city as an outsider witnessing its layered reality.
For a long time the work stayed in exactly the same order in which it was
written but at some point that felt restrictive and by rearranging the poems
I was able to create a narrative that reflected a move from alienation to
acceptance while retaining the original idea of Utopias, Distopias and the
fragile notion of belonging. During this time the form of the poem also developed
from notes to a series of modern sonnets that have been deliberately levered
open. Above all I wanted to write a narrative that could speak of the city
as it is now and of our complicated entwined existence that is richer for
being at once both sacred and profane.
Read a review of this book at Famous Reporter here, and another at Jacket here.
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