{"id":9379,"date":"2010-10-18T19:54:22","date_gmt":"2010-10-18T19:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=9379"},"modified":"2014-10-09T19:30:32","modified_gmt":"2014-10-09T19:30:32","slug":"centuries-of-skin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=9379","title":{"rendered":"Centuries of skin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.raggedraven.co.uk\/collections.htm#Centuries of skin\" target=\"_blank\">Centuries of skin<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.raggedraven.co.uk\" target=\"_blank\">Ragged Raven Press<\/a><br \/>\n2010<br \/>\n80 pages<br \/>\nISBN: 978-0-9552552-9-8<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"mailto:mailto:joannaezekiel@yahoo.co.uk\" target=\"_blank\">Joanna Ezekiel<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.raggedraven.co.uk\/collections.htm#Centuries of skin\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_dhG5zt0C2KM\/S8S6FN6nyuI\/AAAAAAAAAB4\/Hy2zU_5XS_Q\/s1600\/Jo%27s+camera+054.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Some of the poems in Joanna Ezekiel\u2019s first full poetry collection <em>Centuries of skin<\/em> engage imaginatively with her discoveries, in childhood and adolescence, of her dual Indian Jewish and Eastern European Jewish heritage. In the title poem, <em>Centuries of skin<\/em>, Ezekiel responds to overhearing in synagogue that, \u201cShe\u2019s not a proper Jew\u201d, with \u201cPerhaps I\u2019ll shout.\/Hurl my outlawed voice over wide hats&#8230;\u201d and in \u201cRainbow\u201d, she pictures her family in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/England\" target=\"_blank\">England<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/India\" target=\"_blank\">India<\/a> connected by a rainbow, \u201cour family tree of praying voices\/murmuring the seven colours\u201d. Economic imagery, raw honesty, and wry humour characterise Ezekiel\u2019s poems.<\/p>\n<p>Joanna blogs at <a href=\"http:\/\/mydelayedreactions.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>delayed reactions<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><em>Rainbow<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Friday nights, stumbling Sabbath blessings<br \/>\nwith my brothers and parents, I&#8217;d imagine a rainbow<br \/>\nthat stretched from our home to Bombay,<br \/>\nour family tree of praying voices<br \/>\nmurmuring the seven colours<br \/>\nradiant as peacock blessings<br \/>\nor precious stones, its arc transcending<br \/>\ntimezones, continents, fractured partitions.<br \/>\nclimbing through dense English cloud<br \/>\nto set in a haze of Eastern red.<br \/>\nI didn&#8217;t know then that over it<br \/>\nmy father&#8217;s parents loomed, large<br \/>\nas Buddhas and angry as the sun.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><em><strong>A braid of words<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>I cling to the edge<br \/>\nof the roar of a lion,<br \/>\nit\u2019s white-gold edge<br \/>\nlike a coast at sunrise.<br \/>\nMy feet hang clear<br \/>\nof the quicksand below<br \/>\nas it bubbles and sucks.<br \/>\nI will scramble up<br \/>\nto face the roar,<br \/>\nit\u2019s mountains and valleys,<br \/>\nmy breath a sirocco,<br \/>\nmy pulse a landslide.<br \/>\nI will hear my calm voice<br \/>\nthrough the tremor,<br \/>\na braid of words<br \/>\nlike a pulley-cable<br \/>\nto haul myself across<br \/>\nuntil I fall off<br \/>\ninto full noon sunlight,<br \/>\nblinking, my palms<br \/>\nstripped and raw.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Centuries of skin Ragged Raven Press 2010 80 pages ISBN: 978-0-9552552-9-8 Joanna Ezekiel Some of the poems in Joanna Ezekiel\u2019s first full poetry collection Centuries of skin engage imaginatively with her discoveries, in childhood and adolescence, of her dual Indian Jewish and Eastern European Jewish heritage. In the title poem, Centuries of skin, Ezekiel responds [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,1617,25],"tags":[4061,4060],"class_list":["post-9379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-media-archive","category-poetry-books","category-women","tag-joanna-ezekiel","tag-ragged-raven-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}