Cleaning Jim Dine’s Heart
by Maura Dooley
In the afternoon sunlight at DeCordova sculpture park
she is on the top rung of a pair of steps cleaning a big
dark heart. And it has everything in it, this heart. Twice.
Even the coffee pot I brought back in hand luggage
that time, when such a thing was exotic, exciting,
more or less unknown. The coffee pot that blew up, in the end,
leaving its mark on the ceiling of Oakmead Road. That one.
Here it is, unthought of, unremembered, treacly, right here
in Jim Dine’s big dark heart, which needs cleaning now,
front and back. Twice. Along with all its other secrets,
writ large, packed tight, here, in sunlight. His histories.
Which are our histories, some of them at least,
hands moving in darkness, worn-out shoes, rope,
the hammers and saws of a life together, coffee.
Caught forever here in a heartbeat and wiped clean now,
restored in afternoon sunlight, the darkness shining, made good.
From Poetry Review (Autumn, 2014). Reproduced with kind permission of The Poetry Society.
Forward Prizes for Poetry
Shortlisted for Best Single Poem 2015
The Silvering
Maura Dooley
About Maura Dooley
Maura Dooley (b. 1957, Truro) is of Irish extraction and grew up in Bristol. ‘I’ve written poetry since I was a child,’ she says. ‘Both my older brothers wrote poetry, it seemed like a normal thing to do.’ She studied at the universities of York and Bristol and is now Lecturer in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths.
Dooley’s poetry has been praised for its ‘ability to enact and find images for complex feelings’ (Adam Thorpe). Two of her poetry collections have been shortlisted for the T S Eliot prize. ‘Cleaning Jim Dine’s Heart’ (The Poetry Review), which has been shortlisted for the 2015 Forward prize for Best Single Poem, will be published next year in her forthcoming collection with Bloodaxe.
Her work on behalf of poets and poetry has been longstanding, and includes five years as organiser of creative writing courses for the Arvon Foundation at Lumb Bank in Yorkshire. She was founding Director of the Literature series at London’s Southbank Centre, creating a year-round programme of talks, fiction and poetry readings and re-establishing, after an absence of 20 years, the major festival Poetry International.
Her advice to anyone starting out in poetry today is: ‘Pay no attention to fashion. Read, read, read: read across centuries, traditions and continents.’
