My Guitar

I grasped it very dear.
Tranquillity became deafening.
The timber answers back.
As the thread strikes.

Tranquillity became deafening.
Resonance soothing the air.
As the thread strikes.
Mountains rose from my arms.

Resonance soothing the air.
Tales are told.
Mountains rose from my arms.
As echoes begin dying.

Tales are told.
The timber answers back.
As the echoes begin dying.
I grasped it very dear.

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This poem was Highly Commended (Secondary) for Poetry Object 2016

Judge's Notes:
"In this accomplished poem, things are talking. The timber of the guitar is answering back to the guitarist’s touch, their grasp. Of course, the timber of a guitar is a sounding board and, technically, there is a specific part of a guitar that is a sound board, the top of the guitar, the place where the strings vibrate. The poem also makes good use of formal structures just as music does. There are also more strange things here. What are the ‘mountains’ the guitar raises on the player’s arms? Goosebumps, distant places of the mind, things that need to be climbed, that involve effort and time, that produce echoes? A reader can bring all that and more to bear on this. There is also the paradoxical claim "tranquillity becomes deafening’. This seems a much larger and stranger statement than the old one about ‘deafening silence’. Even the opening and closing line, ‘I grasped it very dear’, is clearly about much more than simply holding this instrument or even
playing it."
~ Jill Jones, Judge, Poetry Object 2016