In this episode, Michael Cooke talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to him – 'Fisherman' by Dennis Scott.

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Michael joined The Poetry Exchange online for one of our Lockdown Exchanges. We are hugely grateful to Michael for spending this time with us and sharing such a beautiful poem and converastion.

Michael Cooke is in conversation with Fiona Bennett and John Prebble.

The 'gift' reading of 'Fisherman' is by John Prebble.

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Fisherman

by Dennis Scott

The scales like metal flint his feet,

their empty eyes like me.

How gray their colours in the heat!

Cool as the oily sea.

With gentle hand he slits the heart,

and the flesh as white as milk

and the ribboned entrails fall apart

like the fall of coiling silk.

Some day I too shall fish, and find

on stranger shores than these

the ribs and muscles of my blind

self, rainbowed from the seas.

From 'Uncle Time' by Dennis Scott, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973.

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