Making the Beds for the Dead

By Gillian Clarke

2004

First Published

3.59

Average Rating

Number of Pages

2H22M

Audio Length

The title sequence of Making the Beds for the Dead charts the journey of a virus in 'the plague year'. Come from outer space, it travels - on a fox's paw, the beak of a kite and a crow and a buzzard - into the very heart of our lives. The poet includes personal verses and stories from farmers in her family and neighbourhood. The open structure allows the Gillian Clarke to include her seven rock poems, written for the National Botanic Garden of Wales; her poems based in archaeology; and her poems about war, and urban violence. There is an instinctive and a deliberate unity of theme and idiom in this book. The poet remains true to her landscapes and her nation. The sequence 'The Physicians of Myddfai', nine sonnets for Aberglasne, and much else is included in this characteristically generous and engaging volume by Wales' best-loved poet.

Avg Rating

3.59

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

31%

4 STARS

28%

3 STARS

24%

2 STARS

1 STARS

14%

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Author

Gillian Clarke

Author · 17 books

Gillian Clarke is one of the central figures in contemporary Welsh poetry, the third to take up the post of National Poet of Wales. Her own poems have achieved widespread critical and popular acclaim (her Selected Poems has gone through seven printings and her work is studied by GCSE and A Level students throughout Britain) but she has also made her cultural mark through her inspirational role as a teacher, as editor of the Anglo-Welsh Review from 1975 - 1984, and as founder and President of Ty Newydd, the writers' centre in North Wales. Clarke currently runs an organic small-holding in Ceredigion, the Welsh landscape is a shaping force in her work, together with recurrent themes of war, womanhood and the passage of time. Her last three books have all been Poetry Book Society Recommendations.