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Gathering Evidence

Caoilinn Hughes

Cover of Gathering Evidence by Caoilinn Hughes
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Categories: 21st Century, First Collections, Irish, New Zealand, Women
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (60 pages)
(Pub. Feb 2014)
9781847772626
£9.95 £8.96
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(Pub. Feb 2014)
9781847772817
£9.95 £8.96
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  • Description
  • Excerpt
  • Author
  • Contents
  • Awards
  • Reviews
  • Atmospheric Physicist vs Poetic Atmosphericist

    You send sound signals into the atmosphere
    and listen for how they return, distorted.
    You measure turbulence – one of the last things
    we’re willing to say is unsolvable.
    Deciphering the data and gathering
    inference is how you stay alive.

    I send sound signals into the atmosphere
    and listen for how they return, distorted.
    I measure turbulence – one of the last things
    we’re willing to say is unsolvable.
    Gathering the data and deciphering
    inference is how I stay alive.
    With pinpoint accuracy, virtuosity and humour, Caoilinn Hughes aligns scientific and poetic venturing. In this striking debut collection she focuses on moments of discovery, from the first controlled nuclear reaction to the shape of an avalanche as witnessed from its catchment area. These are epiphanies with consequences.


    Avalanche
    Gathering Evidence
    The Transit of Venus
    Pacific Rim
    The Moon Should Be Turned
    King of the Castle
    This Is What Makes It Go Bang
    Catechism
    Rational Dress
    On the Content of Brackets
    Looting Roses
    Vagabond Monologue
    Snake Creeps through the Grass
    The Shell Man
    Somatic Cells
    Impressions of Ireland
    To the Elements
    We Are Experiencing Delay
    Two Roundelets
    Every Body Continues In Its State Of Rest
    Lucky
    Marbles
    Communion Afternoon
    Cynophobia
    Playing House
    Dublin Can Be Heaven
    Hames of a Haiku
    Soldiers in the Battle for Hedonism
    Atmospheric Physicist vs Poetic Atmosphericist
    Estuary
    Bruisewort
    Bolivian Children
    A Peruvian Blockade, According to Bolivia
    Altitude
    God Always Geometrises
    Harmony of the Spheres
    Airbowing in Second Violins
    Watershed
    Is It A Kind Of Bell Toll?
    Legacy
    Caoilinn Hughes is an Irish writer whose poetry collection Gathering Evidence (Carcanet, 2014) won the Irish Times Shine/Strong Award and was a finalist for the Seamus Heaney Prize, the Pigott Poetry Prize in association with Listowel Writers' Week, the Royal Society of NZ Science Book Prize and the NZ Post Book ... read more
    Awards won by Caoilinn Hughes Short-listed, 2014 New Zealand Post Book Awards
    (Gathering Evidence)
    Short-listed, 2015 Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize for First Full Collection (Gathering Evidence) Winner, 2015 Shine/Strong Award (Gathering Evidence)
    'Carcanet Press and Belfast women poets are a very happy combination at the moment, and Caoilinn Hughes promises to be as individual a voice as Sinead Morissey. Add to that a caustic wit, as evidenced on Pacific Rim, or a gift for characterisation in Vagabond Monologue -- 'I'll€™ll tell you what makes poetry flow? Nice big bank notes to be writing poems on'€™. And so say all of us.'
    The Belfast Telegraph
    'Hughes brings to the embers of the Irish lyric new breath, new music, new word hoards, reinvigorating that tradition. She spins news from her travels in the wide world and it feels like essential information. This collection is a flaring forth, an auspicious comet, signal of achievement and promise.'
    Paula Meehan
    'The notion of the poet as alchemist is a familiar one, but Caoilinn Hughes gives it new and enormous energy. I find myself wondering how she knows so much about so many things; and then I notice how far her poems travel beyond their own footprints. On page after page, she offers transformation -- turning facts into feeling, experience into knowledge, prose into poetry, science into art.'
    Bill Manhire
Additional Resources 'Gathering Evidence' Reviews
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