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Our Worst SuspicionsJohn Birtwhistle
Imprint: Anvil Press Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: Paperback (64 pages) (Pub. Jun 1972) 9780856461316 Out of Stock
Hail Mary after Yannis Ritsos Step down Our Lady of the salt fish-eyes Down in rockpools love is waiting for you Come lady clutching the eggs of lightning Some seablue day you will take off your scarf For sun to split as the pomegranate Scouring the shore so it gleams like a blade
Advice to a Ruler Sir, the present life of man and this lonely sparrow comes fluttering in, winging from winter into winter This is John Birtwhistle’s first collection of poems since Tidal Models (1980). Its energy and concentration come out of an interest in a wide variety of formal models – from Chinese lyrics and Imagism to Anglo-Saxon riddles and Surrealism – and an appreciation of certain key twentieth-century radical poets: Breton, Eluard, Ho Chi Minh, Neruda, Ritsos and Fortini. Political disquiet, expressive tenderness, and a care for ordering, edge against each other in the poetry. Dennis O’Driscoll commented in Hibernia that ‘a sweeping imagination ranges over past and future, pastoral and urban themes.’ Reviewing his last book, John Heath-Stubbs described Birtwhistle as ‘an ambitious and original poet, not afraid to take chances’, singling out a group of poems on Conamara as ‘altogether admirable for their exact and loving observation.’
Praise for John Birtwhistle
[Birtwhistle's] work is consistently both shaped and calm, and energised by the various tides it travels.
Carol Rumens |
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