Zaffar Kunial

Meanwhile, in the motherland, the ex-gu is almost the thumb of a lost mitten, an impossible interior, deeper than forests and further in.

And deeper inland is the gulp, the gulf, the gap, the grip that goes before love.

And I'll read three poems, and this is the second.

This is called This Inland.

And I suppose in a way, I'm complicating that word England in a way.

And poetry is a kind of inland, I often think, a kind of country that you can carry with you, maybe a between kind of a country.

This Inland.

That way, a butterfly lifts an edge of world.

Is this horse chestnut tree going nowhere?

That way, thunder feels bright and dark.

Is this moss lit from under earth up?

That way, the tip of a rosebud buries the future.

Is this stone smell unpronounced before rain?

That way a star's ground is mineral is this steeple pointing down in the pond.

That way this ends or doesn't with the word is that way I am earthed by a hand.

I'm going to end with a poem that's called O. I don't normally read this one, but this is about an Irish ancestor who is called Hugh O'Donnell.

My grandmother was called Julia Finn MacDonald, and it turns out that the Finn is from somewhere around here, not very far away from here, actually.

And the McDonald turned out to be an O'Donnell, and it took a while to work it out.

And when the family moved to Scotland, they hid the O, and they turned it into a muck.

And so this is partly about the idea of this hidden O, and it's an O with an apostrophe.