‘Away’, by Irish poet Vona Groarke, represents the strange intimacy of transatlantic communications via Skype.
↪ ‘Away’ features in Groarke’s 2009 collection, Spindrift. It opens with the collapse of time zones: “I am three thousand miles ago / five hours in the red.” Groarke moves from futuristic imagery of touching faces on a screen to the horror of feeling trapped in the “room” of an obsolete laptop, shut off from others in an eternal loop “where I Skype and Skype / and no one answers.”
Away
by Vona Groarke
I babysit by Skype,
breakfast to their lunch,
lunch to their dinner.
I straighten uniforms, ask French,
nag music practice, argue Friends,
trim their Bebo access.
I touch their silky faces on my screen.
I am three thousand miles ago,
five hours in the red.
What would it take –
one crossed cyber wire,
a virtual hair’s breadth awry –
for these synapsed hours
to bloat to centuries,
for my background
to be rescinded
to a Botticelli blue,
my webcam image
ruffed and pearled,
speaking vintage words
into spindrift?
Or, failing that,
for me to be headlonged
into light years off
to the room of an obsolete laptop
where I Skype and Skype
and no one answers,
where I Google Earth to see
if the world namechecks
for me this morning
my son’s bike in the garden,
my daughter’s skirt
on the line?
Vona Groarke, ‘Away’, from Spindrift (2009)
RESEARCH
Dorothy Butchard explores this poem in the article ‘Time, Data and Transatlantic Longing‘ for a special issue of the journal Symbiosis (2015).
Who shared this example?
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Dorothy Butchard
Dr Dorothy Butchard is Assistant Professor in Contemporary Literature and Digital Cultures at the University of Birmingham. Dorothy’s research explores how fiction, poetry, creative media and digital works respond to technological change and its effects on wellbeing and community. She is academic theme lead for Imagining Wellbeing in the Centre for Urban Wellbeing, co-director of University…
