Here on
The Viking promontory, thin as its
Name and the hail flung off the skerry
We stop, breathless, laughing, looking
Round. We, the inheritors, looking round
To receive what we will never understand.
But beginning our occupation with faith.

from ‘Sker’

New Selected Poems is a poet’s choice of over thirty years’ work. Minhinnick’s poetry explores the complexities of belonging in the world. It is rooted in the rich particularity of industrial south Wales and the Welsh seaside resort in which he now lives, but its scope is global. New Selected Poems includes ‘An Opera in Baghdad’ as well as translations from six modern Welsh language poets; it mourns the ancient, savaged landscape of Iraq and listens to primeval echoes in the Welsh landscape; it celebrates the rhythms of the Americas. For Minhinnick, people, relationships and landscapes interconnect. The poetry that is true to that world is both lyrical and highly political.

Cover photograph © Robert Minhinnick

Sap    
Short Wave    
A Live Tradition    
Garlic Mustard, from Herbals    
Dawn: Cwrt y Felin    
1921: The Grandfather’s Story    

Ways of Learning    
The Children    
J.P.    
Llangewydd    
The Drinking Art    
Insomnia    
Sker    

Rhys    
Driving in Fog    
Catching My Breath    
An Address    
On the Headland    
Burmese Tales    

The Dinosaur Park    
On the Llyn Fawr Hoard in the National Museum of Wales    
Dock    
Eelers    
The Resort    
Picking    
from Breaking Down    
The Looters    
‘What’s the Point of Being Timid when the House is Falling Down?’    
The Mansion    
Epilogue    
from Fairground Music    
Men    
In the Watchtower    
Looking for Arthur    

Homework    
Daisy at the Court    
A History of Dunraven    
Hey Fatman    
Reunion Street    
Listening to History    
The Swimming Lesson    

The Bombing of Baghdad as seen from an Electrical Goods Shop    
Twenty-Five Laments for Iraq    
The Discovery of Radioactivity    
Carioca    
Songs for the Lugmen    
She Drove a ’Seventies Plymouth    
Neolithic    
The Porthcawl Preludes    
From the Rock Pool    

Belly Button Song (from ‘Botwm i’r Botwm Bol’, by Menna Elfyn)    
Taliesin (from ‘Taliesin’, by Emyr Lewis)    
Beginning to Forget (from ‘Dechrau’r Anghofio’, by Gwyneth Lewis)    
Landscape without a Hat (from ‘Tirlun heb Het’, by Bobi Jones)    
A Song about Soup (from ‘Cawl’, by Elin ap Hywel)    
Automobiles (from ‘Ceir’, by Iwan Llwyd)    

An Opera in Baghdad    
The Hourglass    
La Otra Orilla    
Eavesdropping    
The Castaway    
The Saint of Tusker Rock    
The Fox in the National Museum of Wales    


Index of Titles and First Lines