Tag: gillian clarke

In the land of RS Thomas

Back from a scorching hot week in North Wales, to which we took waterproofs, heavy duty walking boots and woollies, none of which we needed. Thankfully we also took shorts and sunscreen!

The Llyn peninsula is a long way to go, further than Land’s End (I looked it up!) but it was worth it. What a beautiful, unspoilt part of the British Isles. Here’s the view that greeted us at dawn, taken from the door of the cottage.

Tan y Bwlch cottage on the Llyn

It would make an excellent place for a writing retreat. Quiet, surrounded by nature and with a very poor phone signal.

While we were there I started reading Byron Rogers’ compelling life of RS Thomas, The Man who went into the West, which I’ve nearly finished. He was clearly a puzzling and contradictory man. Although I knew the name, I’ve never made an effort to read his work, which I’m a bit ashamed about now. Especially after Gillian Clarke, on a course at Ty Newydd, exhorted all of us to go away and read him. My podcasting poet pal Peter says he met RS when he was a student, and was struck by his presence.

At Aberdaron, in the little church where RS preached for some years, they’ve made a sort of shrine to him, with newspaper articles, copies of poems and other material. Lovely!

RS Thomas poem The Moon in Llyn

While we were there we walked from Aberdaron along the coastal path. It has more ups and downs than the Seven Sisters cliff walk here in Sussex, and very narrow in places. Here’s the view looking back to Aberdaron. You can just see the church graveyard creeping up the hill in the distance.View of Aberdaron

Recipe for Water

Yes that probably sounds familiar, being the title of the 2009 collection by Gillian Clarke. I’ve been thinking a lot about water lately, and flow – great rivers, the mouths of rivers and the place where they become sea. Just riding the ideas at the moment and not rushing it. As Clarke puts it, ‘The sea turns its pages, speaking in tongues’ (‘First Words’)

I’ve been thumbing through some lovely watery poems. This, from Lynne Hjelmgaard’s A Boat Called Annalise: ‘We are in the Ocean’s mouth, / territory unknown’ (‘Night Watch’).  Or this, by Philip Gross:

Scroll up the chattering, brief brilliances
and long abradings, sweeping up of everything

that we let slip, the murk-dynamics
that we might mistake for memory.

(‘Reeling in the River’, from A Fold in the River.)

It’s been just over a year since we moved into our flat which is only a few minutes’ walk from the sea (well, not an ocean but the English Channel), and it’s starting to seep into me. Last week we took a trip to the other end of Great Britain, the northernmost tip of Scotland, and stayed in a room that seemed to teeter over the beach and watch over the North Sea beyond.

view from window

On the last day we managed to fit in a trip to Loch Ness. But a highlight for me was crossing the Cromarty Firth on a ferry with only room for one car (ours). Like a sort of river taxi! The river here is full of decommissioned oil rigs which have a sort of bleak beauty.

Ning ferry across the Cromarty Firth

 

The Reading List, week 1

In the first week of my ‘read a poetry book a day’ quest I actually managed five books rather than seven, but I think that’s a pretty good start. As promised here’s a very brief roundup of my impressions, and a few notes on how the process is going generally.

The books

How to Pour Madness into a TeacupAbegail Morley (Cinnamon, 2009)

A tense, claustrophobic world with two just principal protagonists (‘she’ and ‘he) and a series of nightmarish scenarios where little is said or sayable –   ‘He reads her by her scars. / Does he remember writing them?’ (‘One Last Time’).  The many references to limbs, hands, skin, nails and lips – dragging, wiping, scraping swallowing and sewing – of words, or body parts, or tears – is intensely physical and I felt completely pulled in. The poems are uncomfortable, but compelling – like staring at something you’d really rather turn away from. Read as a sequence at one sitting. Favourite poem: ‘Her Turn’.

Otherwhere – Catherine Smith (Smith/Doorstop, 2012)

Like Abegail, Catherine is both a friend and a poet for whom I have enormous respect. It was she who inspired me start the ‘Reading List’ project, as I explained in my last blog post. So who better to pick up and read in my first week. Reading Otherwhere in one go is rather than gorging on one of those huge chocolate Easter Eggs (in the days when they were filled with yet more chocolate.) One more piece? Oh go on then. In an effort to categorise the themes and styles I started trying to group individual poems under headings…Surreal, Satire, Poignant, Erotic charge, Childhood memory, Ironic observation and Powerful but hard to classify, which I admit is a bit of a cop out. A rich and rollicking great read. Favourite poem: ‘Story’.

A Recipe for Water – Gillian Clarke (Carcanet, 2009)

By the time I picked up A Recipe for Water I was starting to realise how much I have actually read of the poetry books I possess. I feel as if I haven’t had time to read them properly, but even having dipped in and out, I’m still finding many poems familiar. This collection is full of the beautiful nature poetry I associate with Gillian Clarke, her affinity with the Welsh language and her Welsh heritage  – ”The sea turns its pages, speaking in tongues. / The stories are yours, and you are the story.’  – ‘First Words’. Favourite poem: ‘Kites’.

Brumaire and Later – Alasdair Paterson (Flarestack, 2010)

Ooh! I struggled a little here. A pamphlet, so short in length, but very dense. It’s in two halves and built around the premise of the French revolutionary calendar, ‘ in which not only every month but every day was re-named after familiar flora, fauna and work tools’. In the second half, the poems take on the same theme but extend it into post-revolutionary Russia. Not having any great handle on these undoubtedly historic events, I couldn’t quite crack the code. (I blame my French Revolution phobia on being force-fed A Tale of Two Cities when I was eleven.) But I liked the conceit of it, and it makes for some wonderful titles, from ‘Apple’ and ‘Goose’ to ‘Ear’ and ‘Holes’. Probably very entertaining to hear at a reading, with some background preamble.

Overwintering  -Pippa Little  (Carcanet, 2012)

I came across a poem by Pippa Little relatively recently and wanted to read more of her work. Pippa has a wide range of styles and registers, and many of the poems here are rooted in the Northumbrian landscape, its history and its characters. You could glance at the copious notes at the back and worry about what you’re getting into, but no need. The poems are perfectly enjoyable even if you don’t know what the odd word means or refers to (always a sign of good writing, in my book). It was easy to read through this collection in one go, and plenty that was memorable, such as ‘Beijing Flight, Thursday Morning’, ‘After Flooding’ and ‘Spending One Day with Patrick Kavanagh’. Favourite poem: ‘Axis’.

On the process:

To begin with it felt wrong to be reading poetry books as I would a novel – no re-reading or going back (or very little), just ploughing on. But there were unexpected benefits. First of all, when I got the end of a book, especially if I had read it through in one sitting, I found I had very good sense of the work, a big picture if you like, more wood than trees.

Secondly, there are sometimes extended or concurrent themes that may not be obvious when cherry picking or dipping in and out. A repeated word here and there, references between poems (intertextuality, I think that’s called?) and other nuances seem to ping out when you consume a whole book at once. You see many subtle and clever things that you might not otherwise.

It wasn’t easy at first, especially fighting my instinct to re-read when something wasn’t clear. I didn’t re-read until I’d got the end of the collection, and it paid off. On returning to individual poems they seemed so much clearer and familiar the second time around, more so than if I had spent half an hour doing a close reading of a single poem.

At Ty Newydd, part 2

sea-grass-pylon

Here’s the longer post I promised about my week at Ty Newydd. First of all, some of the advice and sayings I captured from the tutors during workshops. It’s not a long list, but we were mostly doing exercises, so I just wrote down phrases that resonated with me:

  • Train yourself to remember details
  • Sometimes by going through an exercise of trying to remember something that happened in the past, you can surprise yourself with what comes out
  • When you’re in a poem, all else disappears – “touch the miracle by allowing this to happen”
  • “At the moment it’s falling apart like a glass of water that’s spilled”
  • There has to be a very good reason for a line to only contain two words
  • Think of verbs as the battery of the poem – they give it life and energy
  • Form forces you to “make choices and to be hard on yourself”
  • You need to love the ‘clay’ between the bricks (ie all the bits of a poem you make have overlooked)
  • There are some words like ‘flotsam’ that “only appear in poems”
  • You can say something more movingly if you don’t over-egg it
  • Have a rationale for your line lengths and stanza lengths – the architecture of the poem
  • Be careful about saying ‘not xyz’ in a poem because then you are saying it!

How we spent the time

There were 16 of us on the course and I was very pleased to find myself thrown together in workshops with so many accomplished and talented poets. We were put into ‘mini groups’ of 3 or 4 and encouraged to work together in our spare time. I warmed very much to my mini-group and I think we did some good work together – we certainly had a lot of laughs (or was it hysteria?) and shared a good amount of wine, all important elements of the bonding, of course.

The idea of spare time was an interesting one! I was in awe of those students who made time to go for runs or a long walk. Two of the days were rainy but I was persuaded to get a bit of fresh air on the last day, which I needed as I had a massive headache from around Thursday lunchtime.

As well as the workshops each morning and two of the afternoons, we had plenty of homework to keep us busy. I was very pleased with my week’s output – two poems that are three-quarters there and the seeds of at least three more. Morning sessions started at ten, so I usually found myself working in my room for at least an hour or so before. At the other end of the day I struggled. On Wednesday I was on the cooking team, so when the afternoon workshop ended we had half an hour ‘free’ until reporting for kitchen duties which then tied us up for the rest of the night, returning to the kitchen after Imtiaz Dharker’s reading to empty the dishwasher and put stuff away. The ‘secret poem’ evening was great fun, but by 11pm when it was drawing to an end I was absolutely fried.

train sign

The thorny issue of tutorials

A few of us (not all – one person took me task for bringing it up) were disappointed to be told right away there would be no individual tutorials, since it was clearly stated on the course literature that there would be ‘plenty of time’ for this during the week. Someone asked the question on the first night and the issue came up several more times, and eventually the tutors defended the decision by saying that individual tutorials tended to just waste everyone else’s time, and were only a feature of beginner-type courses.

The whole thing was (as one student pointed out) simply to do with managing expectations. Some of us had been so excited by the prospect of a hobnob with CAD or GC that it had become a huge selling point of the course. When in fact, if we hadn’t expected it, no-one (me included) would have been disappointed, because we would have gone there simply prepared to take our chances as and when. Which is what happened eventually on the last day, when someone came running into the dining room saying ‘come quick! this is the stuff we’ve been wanting to hear all week!’ – the tutors were in the conservatory, answering questions about getting published, pamphlets, how they (and others) had done it, advice & insider tips … all the things we wanted to ask. Within minutes we were all sitting around them like disciples, agog and hanging on every word.

The people

Naturally what happens in Ty Newydd stays in Ty Newydd. So no identifying details of individuals or the work we covered. But from my own observation, both tutors were extraordinarily giving and worked hard to challenge us and help us develop our writing. It was a generous and supportive group producing some wonderful work. I’ve got exciting names on my radar now: David Borrott, Ben Rogers and Ruby Turok-Squire, for example. Jenny Lewis, who won the competition on the last day with a brilliant sestina (which I had no chance of beating even if I had overcome my flounces about entering) is an accomplished poet with more than one collection already with Carcanet. Her warmth, expertise and sheer humility about her own writing were admirable.

By the end of the week I felt the tutors and students had come to a pretty good rapport. I’ve no idea how Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke teach so many of these courses and remain sane, cheerful and motivated. I have huge respect for them. I’ve never taught on a residential course but I know how exhausted I get after even a half-day workshop with demanding students. It was lovely that both tutors brought along and introduced us to their family in the evenings. The staff at Ty Newydd were so accommodating, relaxed and friendly; I couldn’t fault the atmosphere in that sense.

Relaxing in the library at Ty Newydd

Final thoughts

Several of the students had been on residential courses before, in some cases quite a few. I think I’d be reluctant to do it again in this format. Although for me the ‘outcomes’ of the week (as it would be officially termed I guess) were excellent, I was surprised at how stressful I found being hothoused with so many people I didn’t know. A smaller group would have allowed more real connection with each others’ writing, and might have felt less hectic. I seem to need a lot of thinking time, and because of this I’m not sure my own contributions were that helpful – it takes me longer than five minutes to offer meaningful feedback on a previously unseen poem. But I know there are the economics of numbers to consider.

What I’m hoping is that the payback (if I dare call it that – I was made aware that not everyone likes to talk about the poetry business in such terms) of the week will extend far into the future. I hope I’ve made some friendships and that there may be opportunities for future collaboration, mutual invitations and who knows what other projects. I hope I’ve learned some valuable lessons, about writing and much more. I think I have.

Robin at Ty Newydd

At Ty Newydd, part 1

We’re halfway through the Ty Newydd poetry ‘masterclass’ with Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke, I’m writing this at 5am because my mind won’t relax, so here are my thoughts so far.

Ty Newydd, the Writers Centre for Wales

Firstly, I have nothing but praise for the staff here – Awen in the office, Gavin the warden and chef and his mother-in-law with the lilting accent – everyone has been so lovely, relaxed and accommodating. I have lucked out with my room – it’s big, quiet and warm, I have my own bathroom, the shower is hot. All perfect. There are stunning views from the landing window. The weather has been wonderful and seasonal. This house seems to have a myriad rooms, nooks, little stairways and books, books, books at every turn.

Ty Newydd conservatory

And the course itself? On day one I got off to a shaky start – on the first evening we were gathered together in the library and asked to interview each other in pairs and introduce ourselves. My neighbour and I went for the usual – families, jobs, backgrounds, poetry successes and why we were here. Everyone else seemed to take the quirky route (‘her favourite poet is Lorca, she wishes more people liked wind turbines and her earliest memory is tasting her first mango’) – I made this one up by the way, but you get the picture.

Ty Newydd dining room

We were also told on the first evening the format of the week – seven workshops in all: two morning workshops with each of the tutors, two afternoon sessions with both tutors in which we may bring a poem for feedback (8 participants on Tuesday, the other 8 yesterday) and on Friday afternoon we’ll be compiling an anthology, although I’m not sure what the tutors’ input on that will be. The evenings are for readings. On Tuesday both the tutors read. It was very special to have a ‘private’ reading like that, and there was a lively Q & A at the end. Yesterday we had a visit from Imtiaz Dharker, who clearly has a very warm relationship with both the tutors. She read some new poems and one or two which were clearly favourites from her repertoire. There was poignancy and humour in her work and a quiet beauty to her voice and interpretation, as well as humour. We loved her.

This evening we will have a ‘secret poem’ session – everyone submits an anonymous poem, which are then read out and we have to guess who wrote what. Supposedly it’s a test of who’s been paying attention to other people’s writing and style. Tricky. On Friday it’s the chance for us all to read something and I have to say I’m looking forward to that – both for the chance to read but also to hear other people’s work, since so far we’ve mostly been generating workshop poems.

The only thing that’s been sprung on us is the news that there’s to be a competition. Carol Ann and Gillian decided yesterday it would be fun. This is the one thing that’s derailed me. Not to bore you too much with the detail of what’s been going on in my head but I’ve decided not to take part (It’s not obligatory). Here’s my honest reason: if I entered and didn’t win, I’d be completely gutted. I’m not saying I’m necessarily think I’m a better poet than any of the other participants, but if I’m not then I don’t want to have my nose rubbed in it. And not winning would make me feel that way – even though YES I know it’s not an objective measure of talent and YES I know it’s just a ‘bit of fun’ – I know, I know – but it matters to me that I come away from this week feeling a little stronger and more confident as a poet. And a stupid thing like a competition could undermine everything I’ve experienced here. Maybe I’m the only one to feel this way and if so perhaps I’m just not as big a person as everyone else. Whatever – I will not take part, I will remove that particular stress and I’ll be very happy for the winners!

I think I’ll leave it there for now – more about the workshops, participants and the tutors in my next post.

Out and about the next few weeks . . .

There seems to be plenty happening at the moment, so here’s a quick round-up of some things I’m going to / involved with …

Improve your social web presence - for writers

Firstly, please bear with me if I give a quick plug to my short course at New Writing South which starts tomorrow week, 26th September, 6.30 – 9pm for three weeks, on ‘Improving your social web presence’. It’s basically for any writer who has made small inroads into social media but may be struggling a bit – with finding the time, wondering what to blog or tweet about, not sure how to find writer communities online, struggling with the etiquette or thinking about a Facebook Page, that sort of thing. Lots of practical examples and exercises designed to help writers be inspired, develop useful contacts and find the joy in social media. It’s £80 for the 3 sessions and 10% discount for NWS members. I think there are only 2 places left but I’ll no doubt be running it again in the Spring.

Faber social

Next Tuesday 24th I’m excited to be going to a Faber Social to hear Sam Riviere, Ruth Padel and others plus music. Yay!

Coming up very soon is my trip to Ty Newydd Writers’ Centre for a residential week with Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke. I have a feeling it’s going to be pretty epic and I’m so looking forward to it. Not sure what the broadband is like there, so I may be off the grid for a week and blogging about it when I get back.

Next month I’m planning to get to the Troubadour evening on October 21st to hear an array of lovely poets – it’ll be my first trip to the Troubadour, so am looking forward to that. Details of all the autumn Troubadour readings are here. The next day at Keat’s House in Hampstead, the idea of hearing poetry heavyweights Don Share and Maurice Riordan debate Ezra Pound’s ‘Don’ts’ is just too tempting. Tickets for that event are available from the Poetry Society.

Later that week a bit closer to home is Needlewriters, a quarterly event in Lewes. The October 24th event features our very own John Agard and Grace Nichols, so it’s bound to be a sell-out. I’m delighted to have been invited to join the organising committee of Needlewriters. It’s not really a committee as such – with minutes, officers and regulations – thankfully.  (What is it about the word committee? We need a new word which encompasses the idea of a group of organisers working for a common cause, but without the connotations of officiousness, jobsworthyness and petty politics. Or maybe that’s just my take on it?)

Let me know if you going to any of the above, and let’s say hello.

TFL poets

PS completely off-topic but I noticed on the Popshot blog that Transport for London are seeking a number of poets-in-residence to work out of tube stations during the week of National Poetry Day – if you’re in London it sounds like a lot of fun – details here (PDF).

Train ticket booked

… for Criccieth. I’m all set for the residential course at Ty Newydd in October with Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke. So it now feels like I’m actually going. I’m reading CAD’s ‘Rapture’ and GC’s ‘Recipe for Water’ at the moment and feeling buoyed up at the statement on the Ty Newydd course description saying “there will be ample time devoted to one-to-one tutorials” – whoa. I think Arvon only offer one short tutorial during the week. So that sounds very promising. Meanwhile I’ve been looking up all the other participants and there are some very experienced poets, so I’m looking forward to a challenging and fruitful week.

On the subject of courses, I’m very grateful to Josephine Corcoran for flagging this up on Facebook – a free online course from the University of Pennsylvania on American poetry which is just what I need. I’ve signed up for it, although not sure I’ll have the time to do the written work – but even just to watch the video discussions and learn in a passive way I think will be great.

Ty Newydd excitement & friends’ news

Ty Newydd photo by Touchstone

What’s been your experience of writers’ residential courses? I’ve heard many good things from friends who’ve done an Arvon course or similar. The idea of a few days holed up in seclusion with time and space to focus on writing does seem like a wonderful luxury.

I created my own ‘retreat’ a couple of years ago and rented a tiny beach house at Camber Sands for a few days in March. I was lucky with the weather – cold but bright and breezy days – but the place lacked a comfortable chair in which to write. I got a fair bit done, writing, reading and walking/thinking about writing. But I was a tad lonely, and it’s hard to stay motivated on your own.

Anyway I’ve finally booked onto a course and I’m feeling quite excited about it. It’s billed as a poetry ‘masterclass’ with Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke and it’s at Ty Newydd in October. (Photo above from their website). What attracted me was the fact that we had to send some poems before we got definitely accepted. I’ve no idea if that was a token gesture – maybe there were only 16 applicants anyway – but it feels like some sort of quality control, and that really appeals to me. Hopefully we won’t have the kinds of problems described by Isabel Rogers on her blog recently. If you’re going to shell out 500 quid you kind of want to know that everyone else is at least as serious and willing to participate as you are (maybe that sounds a bit pompous but hey.)

PLUS…  news of poet friends  – Brighton Stanza organiser Jo Grigg has tried to keep quiet about the fact that she had two poems on the National Poetry Competition long list this year (come on Jo, could you try bragging a bit more, you’re making me look bad!) and Tess Jolly hit the jackpot in a US competition – there’s gold in them thar hills! Not only that, but Hastings roving writer Antony Mair is now sending out his poems and has had work accepted by Ink, Sweat & Tears and Acumen – nice one.

PS can anyone tell me how on earth to pronounce ‘Ty Newydd’? – thanks

T S Eliot shortlisted poetry collections – reviews

t s eliot prize collections 2012

I confess haven’t read all the collections shortlisted for this year’s T S Eliot Prize. But I’ve trawled for informative reviews of each, in order to at least have an idea and also in anticipation of hearing all the poets read on Sunday evening at the Festival Hall. So here we go.

Sean Borodale Bee Journal  (Jonathan Cape) (Bees seem to be a hot topic at the moment. Does their essential yet potentially doomed role in the ecosystem give them extra poetic power?)  Giles Pitts’ review in Varsity makes me think I would enjoy this collection.

‘10th February: Dismantling the Comb’, for example, is a deeply moving account of bereavement, the poet shining light into the comb’s cells in a fruitless search for life: ‘It’s like the grain of a moon, a spoon-back of pale no one, / just the pail of an egg’s dry opal empty of hunger’.

Gillian Clarke Ice (Carcanet) – Stevie Davies in the Independent calls it ‘partly pastoral elegy, partly georgic’ and offers this assessment. 

In 1947, news of the ice-girl’s end aroused in the prescient young Gillian a sense of “her china inkwell emptied of its words,/ the groove for her pen like a shallow grave”.

Julia Copus The World’s Two Smallest Humans  (Faber & Faber) – reviewed in the Guardian by Kate Kellaway, who calls it a ‘remarkable collection’. She focuses in particular on the poem ‘Ghost’ which is printed in full at the end of the review, noting that the poet “avoids the first person and keeps a tight rein on emotion.”

SImon Armitage The Death of King Arthur  (Faber & Faber) – a gallant Kate Kellaway tackles this tome despiteadmitting initial reluctance (“When I studied Anglo-Saxon at university, I remember complaining that whenever I wasn’t sure of a word, it turned out to mean “spear”.”) She concedes, however, that Armitage “has a miraculous ability to make the past fresh, moving and urgent, not allowing legend to create distance.”  Personally I’m not sure how much I’d relish all those bloody battles, but perhaps I need to keep an open mind – if I’ve got the stomach for Julia Copus’s IVF poems then I can face anything. (For some reason, poems about pregnancy and childbirth make me queasy.)

Paul Farley The Dark Film (Picador) – despite Nicholas Pierpan’s excoriating review in Tower Poetry (is this the guy who critiqued my work both times I submitted stuff for the Poetry Society’s ‘Prescription’ service? I recognise the style!) I am interested to read this collection, if only to see if there’s more to it than Pierpan fancies. (For example, ‘Saturday Irons’ he dismisses with  “Are the final two lines tongue-in-cheek, or just bathetic? I honestly can’t tell; they don’t work either way.”)

Jorie Graham P L A C E (Carcanet) – is this is the front-runner, having already won the Forward Prize? Here’s Sean O’Brien’s review in the Guardian. Funnily enough I only heard of Jorie Graham recently, when I asked poet friend Lynne about American poetry, in which she’s pretty much steeped. Must explore.

Kathleen JamieThe Overhaul  (Picador) – I was googling this to find a review and got sidetracked by a wonderful interview on the Scottish Review of Books. I like the sound of Kathleen Jamie, she comes across a bit like Don Paterson, all dry and matter-of-fact what’s-the-fuss-all-about. Must be a scottish thang. Anyway, here’s Maria Johnston’s review in the Guardian of what sounds like a fine collection.

Sharon Olds Stag’s Leap (Jonathan Cape) – my poet friend Charlotte lent me a copy of this to read a couple of months ago and there was something terrifyingly gripping about it – the story of a marriage break up in painful, masochistic detail. It gave me bad dreams – I suppose it played on my greatest nightmare, which would be to lose the love and fidelity of my husband. But here’s a wonderful video interview / profile on the PBS website where Sharon reads from the book and talks about her writing and her life. There’s a sympathy, acceptance and calmness about her that I nearly missed in the reading of Stag’s Leap.

Jacob Polley The Havocs (Picador) – so I click on the Guardian’s review of this collection and there’s a photo of a beekeeper – wtf! Anyway, Ben Wilkinson finds much to admire:

Tripping through assorted rhythms, sonnets, end-rhymed quatrains and the looping lines of its centrepiece, it is as formally vibrant as the luminous letters that adorn its cover….The Havocs may be an uneven collection that sometimes finds Polley treading water, but a handful of its poems are so moving and memorable you might just forgive him.

Deryn Rees-Jones Burying the Wren (Seren) – Carl Griffin in the Wales Arts Review suggests that this collection on ‘recollections and grief’ has its ‘fair share of poems that should have been buried with the wren’. Nevertheless he finds ‘ingenious images’ as well as ‘snatches of comedy and joy’ in her writing.