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Selected Poems

Robert Minhinnick

Cover Picture of Selected Poems
Categories: Welsh
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (220 pages)
(Pub. Mar 1999)
9781857543834
Out of Stock
  • Description
  • Excerpt
  • Author
  • Awards
  • Reviews
  • Bullet of stained glass glancing out of the traffic.
    Some trembling cellophane I find at my feet.
    Handspan of colours; daubs from the palette of light.
    Black honeycomb patter embroidered on wings.
    Carnage in October: blue scalds of the dusk.
    Somnolent. Extinguished. Jewel of pus on dragonfly snout.
    I hold in my hand a crucifix on the Cribwr road.

    'Dragonfly'
       
    Robert Minhinnick's is amongst the major voices of modern Wales. His Selected Poems draws on six collections published between 1978 and 1994. Several uncollected pieces are also included. The earlier poems are diverse: descriptions of work in heavy industry and delicate 'herbals' (observations of wildlife around the writer's childhood home in Wales) exist side by side. Later poems deal with travel - in Brazil and the United States - and depict the troubled, often terrifying world of schizophrenia.

    Selected Poems celebrates the life and characters of a close-knit community - a peopled landscape - then breaks away to consider history and culture from wider perspectives. Powerful images and severe compassion are hallmarks of the work.

    ROBERT MINHINNICK, born near Neath in 1952, has published poetry and two collections of essays. His book of essays, Watching the Fire Eater, was Welsh Book of the Year in 1993. He has received an Eric Gregory Award for his poetry, a John Morgan Award for his prose work and two Arts Council of Wales Literature Prizes. In 1998 he received a Cholomondeley Award. He founded Friends of the Earth Cymru (Wales) in 1984 and has worked as a writer in residence in Canada. He is currently editor of Poetry Wales. His most recent collection of essays Badlands (Seren, 1996).
    Robert Minhinnick’s recent publications include the novels, Sea Holly (2007) and Limestone Man (2015) from Seren and Fairground Music: the World of Porthcawl Funfair (Gomer, 2010). He edited the international quarterly, Poetry Wales, 1997 – 2008, and received a major Creative Wales award in 2008 to write a collection of ... read more
    Awards won by Robert Minhinnick Short-listed, 2017 The T.S. Eliot Prize  (Diary of the Last Man ) Winner, 2018 Wales Book of the Year (Diary of the Last Man ) Winner, 2018 Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Diary of the Last Man )
    Praise for Robert Minhinnick 'This is environmentalism turned into elegy. It's so powerful, so political...These are serious poems for serious times..that will stay with you and make you think about what we're doing with the planet.' 

    Carolyn Hitt, Wales Book of the Year Awards Judge  

     'While Robert Minhinnick's Diary of the Last Man is rooted in the dunescapes of the author's hometown of Porthcawl, it is also a work that is intrinsically internationalist in outlook. The long title poem is a wry, standing-ovation-worthy requiem for humanity predominantly set on the Welsh coast but it could be argued that Minhinnick reserves his most powerful poetry for when he casts his eyes abroad.'
    Wales Arts Review Highlights of the Year 2017


     'Diary of the Last Man presents an unsentimental, indifferent world, filled with cruelty and atrocity but, while there may be no Jesus in Minhinnick's geology, there is no shortage of beauty and, filtered through the sands of his language, this beauty is arresting and memorable.'
    Poetry blogger John Field on the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize newsletter


    'It is in observing these cycles of sea and river, human and animal, that Minhinnick most excels, and his collection as a whole is beautifully and acoustically attuned to what is most precious in out lives and around us' Suzannah V Evans, New Welsh Review on Diary of the Last Man 'Robert Minhinnick's new collection confirms his status as one of the most important poets of these turbulent times. Bleakly elegiac, environmentally political, vital and visionary, his poems cast an extraordinary light over our darkening landscapes.'
    Carol Ann Duffy
    'After the Hurricane is a rich and rewarding collection, full of flinty fragments which light a bonfire of the imagination.'
    Planet: The Welsh Internationalist
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