Carcanet Press - A Recipe for Water

Description
Excerpt
Author
Contents
Awards
Reviews
Audio

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

Born in Cardiff, Gillian Clarke is a poet, playwright, editor, broadcaster, lecturer and translator (from Welsh). She edited the Anglo-Welsh Review from 1975 to 1984, and has taught creative writing in primary and secondary schools and at university level. She is president of Ty Newydd, the writers' centre in North Wales ... read more

Awards won by Gillian Clarke Commended, 2024 A Poetry Book Society Spring Recommendation
(The Silence) Short-listed, 2022 The Wales Book of the Year
(Roots Home) 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 is a collection which deserves the readerâs full attention. The poems may at times prove uneasy, they will make us think and maybe demand reading again, and again. But they will remain with us.'

James Caruth, The North
'Clarke's skill lies in using simple language to record moments of great beauty, no less lovely for sometimes being familiar. She reminds us of the comfort to be drawn from paying attention to nature'

Rishi Dastidar, The Guardian

'Rich with repetition and punctuated by potent page breaks, this extraordinarily incisive collection creates space to reflect upon how the pandemic has transformed us and what, in the face of loss and quiet, our hearts have learned.'

Jo Clement, The Poetry Society Bulletin

'The Silence is not concerned only with the pandemic. Gillian Clarke's writing frequently offsets her awareness of the naturalness and depth of her roots in rural Wales with the sense of strangeness which comes from having English as her "mother-tongue". These meditations are delicately handled in the collection, and particularly striking in the context of environmental catastrophe. What now threatens the landscape which Clarke has farmed and nurtured, in life as in verse, are shadows which roll across the globe, turning, for many people, the possibility of belonging anywhere into wishful thinking. The Silence is full of poems which remind us of the importance of place, and the demand of its words and silences to be listened to.'

Carol Rumens, The Guardian Poem of the Week

'There is a numinous quality to this book, a kind of spiritual attention which reveals, by silence and contemplation, the wondrous.'

Stephen Sexton, Irish Times

'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

An Evening with Gillian Clarke: Part 1 of 3 - Oswestry Festival of the Word 2012 (38:15 mins) An Evening with Gillian Clarke: Part 2 of 3 - Oswestry Festival of the Word 2012 (28:29 mins) An Evening with Gillian Clarke: Part 3 of 3 (credits) - Oswestry Festival of the Word 2012 (5:25 mins)

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A Recipe for Water Gillian Clarke 10% off eBook (EPUB) 10% off Paperback Categories: 21st Century, Welsh Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: eBook (EPUB) Needs ADE! (Pub. Apr 2012) 9781847778130 £9.95 £8.96 Paperback (96 pages) (Pub. Apr 2009) 9781857549881 £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 and are not prepared to install, Adobe Digital Editions. Description Excerpt Author Contents Awards Reviews Audio 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 Born in Cardiff, Gillian Clarke is a poet, playwright, editor, broadcaster, lecturer and translator (from Welsh). She edited the Anglo-Welsh Review from 1975 to 1984, and has taught creative writing in primary and secondary schools and at university level. She is president of Ty Newydd, the writers' centre in North Wales ... read more Awards won by Gillian Clarke Commended, 2024 A Poetry Book Society Spring Recommendation (The Silence) Short-listed, 2022 The Wales Book of the Year (Roots Home) 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 is a collection which deserves the readerâs full attention. The poems may at times prove uneasy, they will make us think and maybe demand reading again, and again. But they will remain with us.' James Caruth, The North 'Clarke's skill lies in using simple language to record moments of great beauty, no less lovely for sometimes being familiar. She reminds us of the comfort to be drawn from paying attention to nature' Rishi Dastidar, The Guardian 'Rich with repetition and punctuated by potent page breaks, this extraordinarily incisive collection creates space to reflect upon how the pandemic has transformed us and what, in the face of loss and quiet, our hearts have learned.' Jo Clement, The Poetry Society Bulletin 'The Silence is not concerned only with the pandemic. Gillian Clarke's writing frequently offsets her awareness of the naturalness and depth of her roots in rural Wales with the sense of strangeness which comes from having English as her "mother-tongue". These meditations are delicately handled in the collection, and particularly striking in the context of environmental catastrophe. What now threatens the landscape which Clarke has farmed and nurtured, in life as in verse, are shadows which roll across the globe, turning, for many people, the possibility of belonging anywhere into wishful thinking. The Silence is full of poems which remind us of the importance of place, and the demand of its words and silences to be listened to.' *Carol Rumens, The Guardian* Poem of the Week** 'There is a numinous quality to this book, a kind of spiritual attention which reveals, by silence and contemplation, the wondrous.' Stephen Sexton, Irish Times '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* An Evening with Gillian Clarke: Part 1 of 3 - Oswestry Festival of the Word 2012 (38:15 mins) An Evening with Gillian Clarke: Part 2 of 3 - Oswestry Festival of the Word 2012 (28:29 mins) An Evening with Gillian Clarke: Part 3 of 3 (credits) - Oswestry Festival of the Word 2012 (5:25 mins) You might also be interested in: At the Source Gillian Clarke	Share this... Quick Links Carcanet Poetry Carcanet Classics Carcanet Fiction Carcanet Film Lives and Letters PN Review Video Carcanet Celebrates 50 Years! The Carcanet Blog One Little Room: Peter McDonald read more Collected Poems: Mimi Khalvati read more Invisible Dog: Fabio Morbito, translated by Richard Gwyn read more Dante's Purgatorio: Philip Terry read more Billy 'Nibs' Buckshot: John Gallas read more Emotional Support Horse: Claudine Toutoungi read more
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