The Australian-born Clive James, perhaps best known to many as a television and broadcasting celebrity, is the author of more than 40 books, ranging from essays and collections of literary and TV criticism, to travel writing and novels, five autobiographical volumes, and a translation of Dante’s The Divine Comedy.
He is also acknowledged as a poet of stature whose finely crafted work offers wit and wisdom on life and imminent mortality, with rueful self-knowledge. His much admired 2015 collection, Sentenced to Life, has now been joined by another scintillating volume of poems, Injury Time (Picador, £14.99). This is a sample from it.
FRONT FLIP HALF TWIST
In the video from Wales, my granddaughter
Steps to the wall’s edge. Just a yard below
The beach begins, a long way from the water.
A pause for thought. She then proceeds to throw
A cartwheel through the air, and, when she lands,
Stand upright on the sands, all done no hands.
~
She came to her miraculous mastery
Of this manoeuvre by a strict process –
She still insists it was no mystery –
Of more and more to reach down less and less
Until, one day, the finished thing was there,
Made manifest entirely in mid-air.
~
I who can fly no longer feel I’m flying
When I watch her describe that graceful arc,
So perfectly alive. I can’t be dying
If I see this. The sky will not grow dark
While she spins through it, setting it alight,
Making my day by staving off the night.
~
Play it again. A poem that has taken
Its final form is radiant like this.
Beginnings left behind, but not forsaken,
Its history beyond analysis,
What starts by growing slowly, like a pearl,
Takes off and turns into a whirling girl.
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