Ray Givans The Innermost Room September 2017. 32 pp. ISBN-13 978-3-901993-62-6 £6.00 (+ 1.50 p&p), €6.00 (+ 1.50 p&p), US$8.50 (+ 2.50 p&p)   “Givans approaches his subjects from an angle, brings them to life in richly rewarding insights, imagery and patterns of sound. The themes: characters of faith and literature, from Emily Dickinson to Marilyn Monroe, exude breadth and depth, the language is refreshing and the characters stand before us, suddenly familiar and bathed in new light. A masterly gathering, delicately and astutely balanced. And a joy to read.” John F. Deane “In The Innermost Room, Givans conjures intimate episodes from the lives of historical figures and those who loved and suffered their peculiar qualities. He re-illuminates these relationships and, in the process, reveals his own creative and ethical sympathies. A formally deft collection, there is a delicacy to Givans’ imagery that regularly gives this reader pause, as when the would-be lover of the Trappist Monk, Thomas Merton, confronts the impossibility of physical love: “Behind you the weight of snow / haemorrhages on clipped wings of a lone cedar.” Inventive, touching and witty: Givans sustains the promise exhibited in his first full collection, Tolstoy in Love (Dedalus Press).” Paul Maddern

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Table of Contents

Excerpts from The Innermost Room

T. S. Eliot Sleeps on Eastbourne Beach

He pitches the deckchair on the dividing line
between estranged shale and pockmarked sand.
Sheltering from bitter winds he hugs the sand barrier
that steps down into the cold sea.
The distant pier, an unmasked Chinese dragon,
is illuminated by a kaleidoscope
of flickering lights. The half-moon peers
across its back, spills envelopes of light
over dark undulating waters that gently deliver
themselves onto the beach in frothy washes.
Despite their calm detachment, sealed within
is a fevered undercurrent that might unleash
a wave that snaps, lashes across this shoreline.

Eliot snuggles into a single blanket,
aftertaste of her flesh fresh on his lips.
In the morning he will return to find her thrashing
in depths of a honeymoon’s shattered glass.
 

John Donne: Mistress

He treads with gentle footsteps on the stairwell;
one resounding creak could raise my father’s ire.
He enters. In his eyes I see the fire
that’s only quenched by the morning bell.
He removes his boots, breeches, doublet and hose
before my girdle slithers to the floor.
It’s then I turn sideways, for he pores
upon my nakedness, as if his nose
was a cartographer’s pressed against a map.
Enraptured I watch him burn with cold
and tremble as my breasts ease from their moulds.
I unloose my cadence of hair and wrap
my flesh in linen. For decorum’s sake
I let him think it’s me he takes.