As If To Sing
Seren (Verlag)
978-1-78172-660-0 (ISBN)
The power of song, to sustain the human spirit, resonates through As if to Sing. A trapped caver crawls back through songs to the sea; Welsh soldiers pack their hearts into a song on the eve of battle, ‘for safe-keeping’; a child crossing a bridge sings ‘a song with no beginning or end’....
Blurring past and present, a ‘torchsong’ of music and light intensifies in ‘The Boys in the Branches’, a moving sequence to the poet’s sons where three boys scale a tree to manhood, to “carve their names on the late sun”. The collection’s closing cadence includes the long poem ‘The Key to Penllain’. Set on the Ceredigion coastline in the summer of 1969, its apocalyptic dream stages a search for a key which could save the planet. This tenth collection is rich in the musical lyricism admired by readers and fellow poets, As if to Sing is an essential addition to this poet’s compelling body of work. Henry has honed his technique still further; he uses traditional and local elements which hymn Wales and gives them to the reader freshly seen.
Described by the late U.A. Fanthorpe as 'a poet's poet' who combines 'a sense of the music of words with an endlessly inventive imagination', Paul Henry came to poetry through songwriting. Born in Aberystwyth and now based in Crickhowell, his work has been widely anthologised and regularly appears in journals as diverse as Poetry Wales and The TLS. A popular creative writing tutor, he ran Ledbury Festival's Poetry Cafe at Hereford's Courtyard theatre and is a regular tutor at writers' centres. He's also taught at the University of South Wales and has guest-edited Poetry Wales. Mari d'Ingrid, a translation of his fifth book, Ingrid's Husband (Seren), was published in France by L'Harmattan. His new and selected poems, The Brittle Sea, appeared in 2010. This was followed in 2012 by its Indian version, The Black Guitar. A regular reader and performer at festivals, he has recently written and presented arts programmes for BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. His sixth Boy Running, was published in February 2015 and was shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year in 2016, and in February 2018 his latest collection, The Glass Aisle, was added to the ranks and even lead to a performance version co-written with fellow musician and songwriter Brian Briggs. They performed it at festivals throughout the summer and there is now a CD available to purchase. https://www.paulhenrypoet.co.uk.
| Erscheinungsdatum | 24.03.2022 |
|---|---|
| Verlagsort | Bridgend |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 129 x 198 mm |
| Gewicht | 114 g |
| Themenwelt | Literatur ► Lyrik / Dramatik ► Lyrik / Gedichte |
| ISBN-10 | 1-78172-660-4 / 1781726604 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-78172-660-0 / 9781781726600 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
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