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Over

Jane Draycott

Over by Jane Draycott
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Categories: 21st Century, Medieval
Imprint: OxfordPoets
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
eBook (EPUB) Needs ADE!
(Pub. Apr 2009)
9781847779373
£9.95 £8.96
Paperback (80 pages)
(Pub. Apr 2009)
9781903039922
£9.95 £8.96
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  • Description
  • Excerpt
  • Author
  • Contents
  • Awards
  • Reviews
  • Audio
  • It's midnight. She enters the water
    the forest of sharp-bladed coral
    the fruit which is not what it seems.
    It's midnight she's leaving
    she's leaving the Hotel of Dreams.

                                from 'Juliet' by Jane Draycott
    Over, Jane Draycott's third book, takes its title from a sequence of twenty-six poems based on the international phonetic alphabet: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta... In these and other pieces Draycott creates a world of echoing voices and reflections. She evokes the mirrors and doorways, dreams and night-time journeys that transform the familiar: entrances into a different reality. Over explores liminal places where ocean meets land, land drops to ravine, lives intersect in piazzas. The poems cross thresholds between what is finished and what is 'not over yet', between present and past and, in an extract from her new translation of the medieval dream-vision Pearl, between a sunlit garden and the mysterious landscape of the world to come.


    Contents


    Sky man
    The Square
    The Girls' Book of Model-Making
    In the same way
    Pass
    We would like you to listen
    Concourse
    The Longest Day
    Ashburnham House
    Turquoise
    After the Meal
    All this was fields
    Night Museum
    The Fair Miles
    Mass Observation
    Quay Street
    Island
    Opera Express
    Eldorado
    The Funeral of Queen Victoria
    Lookout Mountain
    All that we have
    from Pearl
    Return to Relleu
    Picnic
    Technique
    Door
    Wayzgoose
    The Hired Boat

    Over

    Alpha
    Bravo
    Charlie
    Delta
    Echo
    Foxtrot
    Golf
    Hotel
    India
    Juliet
    Kilo
    Lima
    Mike
    November
    Oscar
    Papa
    Quebec
    Romeo
    Sierra
    Tango
    Uniform
    Victor
    Whiskey
    X-ray
    Yankee
    Zulu



    Jane Draycott’s previous collections from Carcanet Press include The Occupant (Poetry Book Society Recommendation), Over (T S Eliot Prize shortlist), Prince Rupert’s Drop (Forward Prize shortlist) and her 2011 prize-winning translation of the the medieval dream-elegy Pearl.   Other collections, from Two Rives Press, include Storms Under the Skin: Selected Poems ... read more
    Awards won by Jane Draycott Winner, 2023 A Cholomondeley Award
    Praise for Jane Draycott 'These are approachable poems, expressed in lucid language, and studded with clear images. They are finely wrought, knitting form and sound patterns beautifully, but holding these formal properties lightly... The Kingdom is moving, intriguing. It's a place I know I will keep returning too, to lose an hour our two.'
    Emma Simon, The Friday Poem
    'Draycott is rightly regarded as a poet of sensitivity and lyrical control. But these are not airy poems. Their mysteries are well served by the muscularity of her descriptions. Even the briefest poems here offer richly textured, shimmering language.'
    Maya Popa, TLS
    'These poems, especially when read in order in the collection as a whole, are deeply unsettling; yet there is love in them, and hope. There is also great tenderness and an awareness of a beauty that can still be valued in the fragility of the moment and the world.'
    Kathleen Bell, The High Window
     'I should make clear from the outset that it's a collection I like very much... This is a collection that speaks to the reader's doubts, uncertainties, fears, death-thoughts; there is no single reading and that, for me, makes it stronger... It anticipates the future, as art should.'
    London Grip
    'A host of subtle and spellbinding effects, testament to Dryacott's skill as a poet as well as her grasp of grief's physcological realities'
    Theophilus Kewk, The North


     'Draycott uses the language of dreams to make the quotidian illusionary, like a vapour captured in lexicon. Sleeplessness haunts the collection... Homeliness is pushed, just, over to Freud's unhomely conclusions. The dream world, enticing and enlightening as he might have it to be, proves no more accommodating than our own.'
    Lucy Cheseldine, STAND
    'Her searching curiosity and wonderful assurance make her an impeccable and central poetic intelligence.'
    Penelope Shuttle, Manhattan Review
    'When Jane Draycott read, for the first time, sections of her exquisitely modulated translation of the 'Pearl' poem, its echoing character seemed to transport me from one cultural space to another... I came as close to hearing the 'Pearl' poet's voice as I am ever likely to be.' - Stella Halkyard, PN Review 'Draycott's version is compellingly human.'
    Lachlan Mackinnon, Times Literary Supplement
     'I've waited some time to read something this intelligent, this sensuous and this crystalline. In fact The Night Tree is the finest collection I've read for ages.'
    Guardian
     'The language is marvellously modulated yet stirringly wild. Draycott has carried over into our tamer, tired world a strong, strange sense of how original, gorgeous and natural this old poem can be.'

     David Morley, Poetry Review


    'Draycott's version is compellingly human.'
    Lachlan Mackinnon, Times Literary Supplement
    'Draycott's version is compellingly human.'
    Lachlan Mackinnon, Times Literary Supplement
    'When Jane Draycott read, for the first time, sections of her exquisitely modulated translation of the 'Pearl' poem, its echoing character seemed to transport me from one cultural space to another... I came as close to hearing the 'Pearl' poet's voice as I am ever likely to be.' - Stella Halkyard, PN Review 'Draycott's version is compellingly human.'
    Lachlan Mackinnon, Times Literary Supplement
    'The language is marvellously modulated yet stirringly wild. Draycott has carried over into our tamer, tired world a strong, strange sense of how original, gorgeous and natural this old poem can be.' - David Morley, Poetry Review
    'When Jane Draycott read, for the first time, sections of her exquisitely modulated translation of the 'Pearl' poem, its echoing character seemed to transport me from one cultural space to another... I came as close to hearing the 'Pearl' poet's voice as I am ever likely to be.' - Stella Halkyard, PN Review 'Draycott's version is compellingly human.'
    Lachlan Mackinnon, Times Literary Supplement
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