Blood feather

£12.00

In ‘Blood Feather’, a book of doubling and displacement, we see time in a new way: the past, personal and collective, lingering as an ever-present ghost – while lost beyond recall. The first section, ‘Mother as Spy’ – a series of deeply moving poems about his mother, displaced between languages – investigates her illness and death; how being bilingual is like having a double, a second self; how each self haunts the other. ‘The Cooling Towers of Didcot’ elegises today’s post-industrial landscapes, their people and professions: sidelined by literature, bypassed by globalisation. The final sequence, ‘After the Flood’, links the book’s themes, seeking a way of seeing things for the first time and the last time simultaneously.

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SKU: 9780224098311 Category: Tag:

Description

In this intimate, confiding poetry collection, McGuinness shows how identity is layered, permeable, always in motion – how we are always actor and audience to ourselves.

In Blood Feather, a book of doubling and displacement, we see time in a new way: the past, personal and collective, lingering as an ever-present ghost – while lost beyond recall.

The first section, ‘Squeeze the Day’ – a series of deeply moving poems about the author’s mother, displaced between languages – investigates her illness and death; how being bilingual is like having a double, a second self; how each self haunts the other. ‘The Noises Things Make When They Leave’ elegises today’s post-industrial landscapes, their people and professions: sidelined by literature, bypassed by globalisation. The final sequence, ‘After the Flood’, links the book’s themes, seeking a way of seeing things for the first time and the last time simultaneously. Exploring the gaps between languages and between our selves in language, Patrick McGuinness dreams of a new tense in which the world’s losses are redeemed:

‘It’s the anniversary of my mother’s death,
and it’s my mother’s birthday –
the day she short-circuited the tenses,
made the current flow both ways.’

A clear-sighted, intimate new poetry collection from the prizewinning author of Other People’s Countries and Throw me to the Wolves.

Additional information

Weight 100 g
Dimensions 19.8 × 13.3 × 0.9 cm
Author

Publisher

Jonathan Cape

Imprint

Cover

Paperback

Pages

80

Language

English

Edition
Dewey

821.92 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K