The Reckoning of Salt
My second poem published in ionosphere
Welcome everyone! If you are new to Inkwasting, thank you for joining me and do check out the archive. You might start with my Steinbeck-inspired poem “The Lament of Curley’s Wife” which was recently nominated by The Disappointed Housewife for the Best of the Net.
The Lament of Curley's Wife
Thanks so much to Kevin Brennan for publishing my poem in The Disappointed Housewife. This poem was inspired by teaching John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.
As August haze gives way to the sharpening clarity of September and school, it feels like a good time for this poem which was published in ionosphere along with The Work of Poetry in the Age of Large Language Models. You can find the issue in print here. “The Reckoning of Salt” shares some of the thematic concerns of technology and memory that I was playing around with in “The Work of Poetry”. Looking forward to the use of salt in our energy storage future as well as backward in the way salt mines are used to hold our history, the poem explores the incredible power and potential of this quotidian substance, with a nostalgic turn at the very end. I hope that you enjoy it.
If you have any thoughts and comments on this poem, I would love to hear them.
For more on salt:
Roger Harrabin on the use of molten salt energy storage in The Guardian.
Images of the Winsford salt mine archive in Cheshire.