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Sarajevo RosesRory Waterman![]()
RRP: GBP 7.99
Available from: ![]() This title is available for academic inspection (paperback only).
eBook (Kindle)
ISBN: 978 1 784104 10 8 Categories: 21st Century, British Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Published: November 2017 64 pages (print version) Publisher: Carcanet Press Also available in: eBook (EPUB), Paperback, eBook (PDF) Digital access available through Exact Editions
Sarajevo Roses is Rory Waterman’s second collection of poems. From the start we are in the company of a poet on the move . On sleeper trains, in cars and on foot, Waterman takes us into Mediterranean Europe, to Palma’s Bellver Castle, to Venice, to Krujë, to the Italian ghost-town Craco, and to St Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, where ‘selfie-sticks dance before us at the altar’. Sarajevo’s ‘neatened muddle of terracotta and concrete’ is twinned with the ‘church spires and rain-bright roofs’ of the poet’s former hometown, Lincoln.
The Sarajevo rose of the book’s title – a mortar crater filled with red resin, in remembrance – is less an overarching symbol here than one example of the past inscribed upon the present – culturally in our architecture, individually on our bodies – and of the instinct to preserve wounds as a mark of respect, or warning. Surrounded by the war-shaped, memorial landscapes of Europe, the poet is faced by those smaller wars and memorials one carries within, marks left by lovers, friends, relations, and past selves.
'The world is a slightly better place for the existence of this book. I do not write that lightly.'
Peter Pegnall, Ploughshares Praise for Rory Waterman 'The world is a slightly better place for the existence of this book. I do not write that lightly.' Peter Pegnall, Ploughshares 'Waterman is at once restrained and assured. He has a fine eye for a poem's architecture, playing with symmetry, taking pleasure in the shape of the page, and he demonstrates a remarkably good ear.' John Greening 'By just picking his words with an almost scientific exactitude he makes a poem that is meditative and unforced.' The Irish Examiner 'Rory Waterman writes poems of the kind thereâll always be a need for â poems that require skill to make but donât insist on it, that combine keen-eyed observation and immediately graspable shades of feeling in a memorable way. Watermanâs is a very appealing voice, laconic, unillusioned and vulnerable. His world is a recognisable and convincing one, his rueful, sometimes harsh sincerity is palpable, and he deserves to be read by anyone to whom these things still matter.'
Alan Jenkins |
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