Something was broken –
like milk not rising from the floor
to resume the shape of a jug,
the stone splashed
with creamy stars –

               from 'The Betrayal'

'Rough music' is the old English name for a custom of public scapegoating. This is a book full of disturbing musical echoes, in which brilliant renewals of carol, charm, folksong and ballad explore themes of violence, loss and belonging. Fiona Sampson's characteristic lyric intensity deftly fuses metaphysics and politics with the vernacular of daily life.

From reviews of Common Prayer:

Urgent, acrobatically alert poems alternate with the comparative stillness of a series of love sonnets. Here, too, the imagination is always at work, demonstrating that curiosity is a form of passion. - Sean O'Brien, The Sunday Times

That she is also a very fine poet indeed seems almost impertinent of her, but that is what she is… Sampson's free verse soon surprises by its seductive ease and its vivid rendition of he ordinary, material world. This perfect equilibrium between the numinous and the touchable is typical of Sampson's achievement. - Adam Thorpe, the Guardian

Fiona Sampson burst onto the literary landscape as the brilliant young editor of Poetry Review a couple of years ago. In Common Prayer, her subject is darkness of many kinds, erotic or lonely, histories of Eastern Europe, abandonment. She finds a subtle suggestion of sexual gesture in unexpected places. - Elaine Feinstein, The Times


Cover painting: Marek Ormandik, Suboj (‘Combat’). Reproduced by kind permission of the artist. Cover design StephenRaw.com

Contents

The Betrayal   
Zeus to Juno   
First Theory of Movement   
Communion   
Skater   
At Käsmu   
The Code   
Envoi   
Rough Music or Songs without Tunes   
Out of the Attic   
The Miracle Tree   
Nel Mezzo    
Bushes and Briars   
Saturn’s Riddle   
In a Chalk Landscape   
The Door   
Charivari   
Three Views of the Parish:
    After the Air Tattoo   
    Hayfever Portrait   
    The Lodger   
Angels and Dirt    
The Rain-glass   
Amal and the Night Visitors   
Deep Water   
Crow Voodoo   
Blade   
The Sun-spot   
From the Adulteress’s Songbook   
Schubertiad
Vigil   
Charms for Love   
The Hare