NATURE NOTES: FRAGMENTS FOR AN ELEGY

¶ Nature Notes: Fragments for an Elegy is at once spirited and playful in its poignant observations of nature. Cover artwork is adapted from Industrial City Crow (woodcut, 2003) by Richard Tetrault and is letterpress printed on Mohawk Ultrafelt Black 80 lb. cover, with the interior printed offset on Mohawk Superfine White Vellum 80 lb. text, and is hand-sewn and bound by Gaspereau Press, Kentville, Nova Scotia. Designed by Enoch Chan and Ágnes Cserháti.

• These sharply focused untitled lyric pieces celebrate the delightful and darkly unpredictable aspects of sun, wind, water, light, birds and bird-nests in a deeply sympathetic but unsentimental way. Striking a chord somewhere between the tightness of the haiku and the down-to-earth but stringent ‘steel-pen exactness’ of the early Irish nature lyric, these focused free verse fragments reflect the spontaneous, quietly elating scene of feathered species, along with the wind and running water going about their daily business. In these closely observed intimate sketches of nature’s quietly unnoticed, little half-tucked away mysteries—the ecstatic chirrup of a starling at dawn, the sight of a sparrow seemingly shedding its shadow, the mysterious aspect of the mist-hazed sun at dawn—a glimpse of our own mystery is opened to us. ❧ Colin Carberry

¶ Of Irish and Anglo-Indian descent, Michael Lee Rattigan hails from Croydon, England. After studies in Surrey and neighbouring Kent, he went on to complete postgraduate studies at Trinity College, Dublin, where he published his first poems, and later at the University of London. Between years of study he lived and taught in Cancun, Mexico and Palma de Mallorca, Spain. Having returned to Croydon, he writes richly inspired by his travels and immediate surroundings.