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Letter from a Far Country (2e)
Gillian Clarke
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Paperback
ISBN: 978 1 857549 61 4
Categories: 20th Century, Welsh, Women
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry
Edition: 2nd
Published: October 2006
216 x 135 x 6 mm
64 pages
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Also available in: eBook (Kindle), eBook (EPUB), Paperback
ISBN: 978 1 857549 61 4
Categories: 20th Century, Welsh, Women
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry
Edition: 2nd
Published: October 2006
216 x 135 x 6 mm
64 pages
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Also available in: eBook (Kindle), eBook (EPUB), Paperback
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- Description
- Excerpt
- Author
- Contents
- Awards
- Reviews
- Audio
...Dear husbands, fathers, forefathers,
this is my apologia, my
letter home from the future,
my bottle in the sea which might
take a generation to arrive.
from 'Letter from a Far Country'
this is my apologia, my
letter home from the future,
my bottle in the sea which might
take a generation to arrive.
from 'Letter from a Far Country'
Gillian Clarke's poems are letters from the far countries of personal and ancestral memories, of places and moments of insight. Her acclaimed title poem explores the buried histories of women's lives, the enduring responsibilities that link generations and ensure the continuance of language and traditions. Rooted in rural Wales, Letter from a Far Country celebrates the sources of strength and continuity that bind people to landscape and community.
Letter from a Far Country
Miracle on St. David’s Day
Insomnia
Chalk Pebble
Sunday
East Moors
Scything
Bluetit and Wren
Ll^yr
Blodeuwedd
Siege
Cardiff Elms
The Water Diviner
Hay-Making
Harvest
Friesian Bull
Jac Codi Baw
Taid’s Funeral
White Roses
Pendzhikent
Login
Blodeuyn
Death of a Cat
Sheila na Gig at Kilpeck
Plums
Balsam
Buzzard
Ram
From Clarence Bridge, Newport
Heron at Port Talbot
Mrs Frost
Ice Queen
Suicide on Pentwyn Bridge
Welsh Blacks
On Rhiwbina Hill
Shadows in Llanbadarn
A Journal from France:
Miracle on St. David’s Day
Insomnia
Chalk Pebble
Sunday
East Moors
Scything
Bluetit and Wren
Ll^yr
Blodeuwedd
Siege
Cardiff Elms
The Water Diviner
Hay-Making
Harvest
Friesian Bull
Jac Codi Baw
Taid’s Funeral
White Roses
Pendzhikent
Login
Blodeuyn
Death of a Cat
Sheila na Gig at Kilpeck
Plums
Balsam
Buzzard
Ram
From Clarence Bridge, Newport
Heron at Port Talbot
Mrs Frost
Ice Queen
Suicide on Pentwyn Bridge
Welsh Blacks
On Rhiwbina Hill
Shadows in Llanbadarn
A Journal from France:
September 9thNotes
The Village
La Cirque de Paris
Seamstress at St. Léon
Kingfishers at Condat
Rouffignac
Font de Gaume
Les Combarelles
‘Summer’s going quickly now’
Awards won by Gillian Clarke
Winner, 2011 Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.
Winner, 2012 Wilfred Owen Award
Winner, 2012 Wilfred Owen Award
Praise for Gillian Clarke
'This tug between the factual and the more mystical world beyond is at the heart of the collection. Science can describe the Land but not how love of particular places works within the human spirit...a richly varied and substantial collection'
D A Prince, the North
'Clarke has a direct line to the natural world. She paints the Welsh landscape without idealising or romanticising, and in the process shows that nature doesn't need to be elevated to inspire a quiet awe.'
Financial Times Best Books of 2017
'Always openings. Perceptions never alien to the new. No borders enclose her ideas. They are allowed to roam in her meticulous phrasing. And yet her greatest strength is, paradoxically, her moments of both closure and trapped moments of insight delivered to us grateful readers with faithful intelligence.'
Herald Scotland
'Clarke is a singer among poets, a celebrant of landscape, trees, insects, dead ewes, a writer whose rhythms and vocabulary seem tenaciously rooted in the traditions of the place of their origin.'
The Tablet 'Gillian Clarke's outer and inner landscapes are the sources from which her poetry draws its strengths.'
Carol Ann Duffy, Guardian
'Gillian Clarke's [poems] ring with lucidity and power... Clarke's work is both personal and archetypal, built out of language as concrete as it is musical.'
Anne Stevenson, Times Literary Supplement 'In Ice Gillian Clarke explores memory and identity through a series of winter landscapes.'
Adam Newey, The Guardian, 1st December 2012
'Clarke's mellifluous new collection [A Recipe for Water] is her first since her appointment as Wales's national poet in 2008. The drop of water on the tongue, she tells us, 'was the first word in the world', and it's through water that these poems give up their stories: history is written into the Arctic's ice; myths well up from river sources; the currents on the ocean wash culture and heritage onto our shores. Watery collections have poured forth from the pens of poets from Sean O'Brien to Maura Dooley in recent years; anticipation is high for Clarke's contribution to the pool'.
Sarah Crown, the Guardian, 3 January 2009
D A Prince, the North
'Clarke has a direct line to the natural world. She paints the Welsh landscape without idealising or romanticising, and in the process shows that nature doesn't need to be elevated to inspire a quiet awe.'
Financial Times Best Books of 2017
'Always openings. Perceptions never alien to the new. No borders enclose her ideas. They are allowed to roam in her meticulous phrasing. And yet her greatest strength is, paradoxically, her moments of both closure and trapped moments of insight delivered to us grateful readers with faithful intelligence.'
Herald Scotland
'Clarke is a singer among poets, a celebrant of landscape, trees, insects, dead ewes, a writer whose rhythms and vocabulary seem tenaciously rooted in the traditions of the place of their origin.'
The Tablet 'Gillian Clarke's outer and inner landscapes are the sources from which her poetry draws its strengths.'
Carol Ann Duffy, Guardian
'Gillian Clarke's [poems] ring with lucidity and power... Clarke's work is both personal and archetypal, built out of language as concrete as it is musical.'
Anne Stevenson, Times Literary Supplement 'In Ice Gillian Clarke explores memory and identity through a series of winter landscapes.'
Adam Newey, The Guardian, 1st December 2012
'Clarke's mellifluous new collection [A Recipe for Water] is her first since her appointment as Wales's national poet in 2008. The drop of water on the tongue, she tells us, 'was the first word in the world', and it's through water that these poems give up their stories: history is written into the Arctic's ice; myths well up from river sources; the currents on the ocean wash culture and heritage onto our shores. Watery collections have poured forth from the pens of poets from Sean O'Brien to Maura Dooley in recent years; anticipation is high for Clarke's contribution to the pool'.
Sarah Crown, the Guardian, 3 January 2009
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Edited by Patrick McGuinness
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