ISBN: 978-1-911027-93-5 

Price: £9.99

Publication date: 14^th May 2020

Paperback, 84 pp

DCF: Poetry Collections

This remarkable debut collection from Geraldine Clarkson is an exploration of enclosure and freedom, of what is life-affirming and what is life-suppressing, of emptiness and profusion, of silence and music, and of the impermanence and wonder of the flesh. These poems contain the uncontainable; spellbound and courageous, they roam from South American monasteries to the shorelines of memory and the truth-towers of the self, surveying matters of faith, being, tragedy, and womanhood.

Clarkson is a formally audacious poet of astonishing vision; her writing always richly riotous with detail, possessing the singular ability to move from the maelstrom of feeling to the stilled moment with an assured, quick elegance. Be led in the dance that these dreamlike and deft poems lead, allow their music to lift and move you out of the body and out of time, to somewhere quite extraordinary.

‘A highly inventive, high energy poet who writes poems that are always vividly phrased and technically accomplished. Geraldine Clarkson is one of those rare things, a genuinely exciting new poet.’ – Daljit Nagra

‘Geraldine Clarkson's poems are musical, often playful incantations that delight in the power of words. Formally inventive and vivid with natural imagery.’ - Carol Ann Duffy

'Geraldine Clarkson is—quietly, attentively, humbly—writing some of the best poems of our time.' - Kathryn Maris

Geraldine Clarkson lives in Warwickshire and is the author of three poetry pamphlets, including a Laureate’s Choice and a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet choice. She has won the Poetry London and Ambit competitions, as well as the Magma Editors’ and Anne Born prizes, and has been commended in the National Poetry, Arvon, and Mslexia competitions. Her poems have been published widely in U.K. journals (including The Poetry Review, The Rialto, POEM, The North, Tears in the Fence, and Shearsman magazine), and anthologies, and have also appeared in the U.S. in Poetry magazine. She has taught refugees and migrants, and worked in offices, libraries, and care homes. Her writing is influenced by her Irish roots and a formative period spent in a silent monastic order, including several years in South America.