![]() Quote of the Day
an admirable concern to keep lines open to writing in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and America.
Seamus Heaney
|
|
Book Search
Subscribe to our mailing list
|
|
A Recipe for WaterGillian Clarke![]() 10% off all versions
Categories: 21st Century, Welsh
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: Paperback (96 pages) (Pub. Apr 2009) 9781857549881 £9.95 £8.96 eBook (Kindle) (Pub. Apr 2009) 9781847778147 £9.95 £8.96 eBook (EPUB) Needs ADE! (Pub. Apr 2009) 9781847778130 £9.95 £8.96 To use the EPUB version, you will need to have Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) installed on your device. You can find out more at https://www.adobe.com/uk/solutions/ebook/digital-editions.html. Please do not purchase this version if you do not have, or are prepared to install, Adobe Digital Editions.
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
Awards won by Gillian Clarke
Long-listed, 2020 The Laurel Prize for Ecopoetry (Zoology)
Winner, 2011 Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.
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
You might also be interested in:
![]() At the Source
Gillian Clarke
|
Share this...
Quick Links
Carcanet Celebrates 50 Years!
Anvil Press Poetry
Aspects of Portugal
Audio Books
Carcanet Classics
Carcanet Fiction
Carcanet Film
Carcanet Poetry
FyfieldBooks
Lintott Press
Little Island Press
Lives and Letters
OxfordPoets
PN Review
Sheep Meadow Press
The Carcanet Blog
Charlotte Eichler: NPVIII: Meet the Contributor
read more
New Poetries VIII: Jenny Lewis on Parwana Fayyaz
read more
Angela Leighton: One, Two
read more
Parwana Fayyaz: NPVIII: Meet the Contributor
read more
New Poetries VIII: Sinad Morrissey on Conor Cleary
read more
The Earliest Witnesses: G.C. Waldrep
read more
![]() |
![]() We thank the Arts Council England for their support and assistance in this interactive Project.
|
|
This website ©2000-2021 Carcanet Press Ltd
|