Moody writes with such an understanding of what has been discovered that it is not perceived of as separate from the poet. This intrinsic relationship unites him with Lucy. It is about balance and understanding… as a white male inhabiting the life or space or existence of a female it is his non-threatening position in this, his awakening to Lucy and to so to her experience and life that leads to understanding of her. Moody voices Lucy’s feelings, her thoughts, her exposure, even her ‘rape’. So, in fact, he is sympathetic to her exploitation and her clinical treatment, which disregarded her humanity; while Lucy was helpless in this, Moody gifts her her humanity in his words. She is an object, unable to speak, do or act so is given his voice. There could be reaction against this as Lucy had no choice in this but Moody is aligned with her, not against her and lends her his voice, which otherwise would require her to remain as an object and thus silent.

Andrea Cardow, Associate Tutor (Creativity Culture & Faith), Glasgow University

I still remember, as a precocious, voracious child reading Lucy, the Beginnings of Humankind by Donald C. Johanson and Maitland Armstrong Edey. I was too young to understand much of the science and skipped over the anthropological vocabulary making vague attempts at sounding out language without really absorbing the words. The story, the description, the discovery, what this meant for my understanding of who we were as a species has stayed with me.

I still remember where I was the first time I heard John Moody read from his collection of Lucy Uncatalogued and his masterful use of language which anchors this collection with a reverence for both the literal and metaphorical search for self.

Lucy, the famous Australopithecus afarensis, is the symbolic cornerstone around which the collection orbits. Through Moody’s deep, lyrical exploration of history, memory, and identity, Lucy becomes more than just a prehistoric fossil — she represents the universal search for origins, the complexity of human evolution, and the delicate interplay between our past and present selves. But Moody’s exploration is not just scientific or intellectual. It is spiritual. Lucy is both a figure of awe and a muse that illuminates the soul’s longing for connection, understanding, and truth. This collection is a triumph of poetry that speaks to the heart as much as the intellect. Moody’s exploration of human origins is not only a literal excavation of a species’ past but a profound meditation on our collective search for meaning, an uncovering of the dirt and mess and depth of what it is, has always been, to be human.

Katherine McFarlane award-winning Scottish poet and educator

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My vision quiets impatience,

as …

clouds grey their bellies,
white on ropy-smooth torsos;
skeins of weather lie across
iced-turquoise sky.

Above estuarial water,
rest halcyon hills
roosting in the mountain’s shadows.
Water, edges tucking
and then stretching
taut under these braes.
Watered silk,
palest blue,
shimmering in tension;
waiting for the weather to change
and darken the estuary.

As I wait the indeterminate heights
gather moisture, sitting saturated
on the water’s edge. These clods
of earth and stone reflect their bulk
imperfectly, stretch the water
clamped under basaltic shorelines,
as if woven on geologic looms.
Hills shrug their moss-green
shoulders up to mountains
matted with old snow,
cloaked in livid clouds,
fading to steel grey.

On the estuary’s near shore sit blocky
buildings of blond stone, gold in my sight,
thrown randomly on the shoreline
to catch the gloaming sun.

Two jetties stroke the water,
exquisitely drawn in pencil.
Graphite shaded precision,
no longer launching ships,
two lines on satin, taut.

I’m peacefully waiting for night.
I wake to dream in a sable tree
shadowing the littoral zone.

(41)

JHM March 2021

Film Poem version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5PF3XC2o08

This poem was first published in the Summer 2022 edition of Dawntreader magazine by Indigo Dreams Publishing https://www.indigodreamspublishing.com/magazines

suggest different line breaks to read:

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