Walking by water through the gates
of castle, mountains, sky, I think of him,
great-great-grandfather, gorhendaid,
working the stone-boats on the Menai Straits
to the salt psalm of the sea and the wind's hymn
in the tug and thrust of the tide.

from 'Quayside' by Gillian Clarke

The drop of water on the tongue, writes Gillian Clarke, 'was the first word in the world', and the language of water is the element in which these poems live. Ocean currents create histories and cultures - the port cities of Cardiff and Mumbai; myths are born where great rivers have their source high in the mountains. A bottle of spring water contains the mineral elements of life; we can read the earth's deep history in arctic ice. We share the rhythms of migrations in the pull of tides and seasons through rivers and estuaries.

In her first collection since becoming the National Poet of Wales in 2008, Gillian Clarke explores water as memory and meaning, the bearer of stories that well up from a personal and collective past to return us to the language of the imagination in which we first named the world.

Contents


First Words
A Pocket Dictionary
Glas y Dorlan
Not
Otter
The Fox and the Girl
Sgwarnop
Nettles
A T-Mail to Keats
Fflam
The Ledbury Muse
A Recipe for Water
Severn
A Barge on the Severn
Source
Sabrina
Ice
Tide
Bore
Barrage
Migrations
Mumbai
Man in a Shower
At the Banganga Tank
In the Taj
Laundry
Hands
Post Script
Glacier
Reader's Digest Atlas of the World
City
Afon Taf
Architect
Coins
Llandaf Cathedral
Sleepless
Subway
The Rising Tide
Welsh
Stadium
Wing
Number
Letting the Light In
House of Dreams
A Sonnet for Nye
Mercury
Welsh Gold
Horsetail
Kites
Death's Head Hawkmoth Caterpillar
Oradour-sur-Glane
Singer
Storm over Limousin
Landscape with Farm
The Accompanist
Bach at St Davids
Cattle, Hayfield, Storm
Gravity
Wings
Pegging Out
Love at Livebait
Revival
Castell y Bere
Old Libraries
The Oak Wood
Library Chair
Quayside
Farewell Finisterre
December
Cae Delyn
Advent
The Darkest Day
Solstice
Shepherd