Shadow Dispatches
By Polly Atkin
2013
First Published
4.50
Average Rating
38
Number of Pages
These atmospheric and keenly observational poems offer us a slant perspective on everyday things and events: the ugliness of an elderly mute swan; or a group of migraine sufferers forming a fellowship and holding regular meetings. Poems addressing the complexity of contemporary relationships sit alongside those riffing on traditional themes, even – in the case of ‘Hermes Enodios’ and ‘Potnia Theron’ – revisiting classical gods. These are poems embedded in particular landscapes, in which the real becomes surreal and vice versa. Together they form a poetry which is deeply involved with the natural world – concerned with deer in fields and jays in woods – but which is not in any way removed, encompassing email, photo-shop, and fighter jets.
Avg Rating
4.50
Number of Ratings
2
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Author
Polly Atkin
Author · 8 books
Polly Atkin is a poet and academic. She lives in Cumbria and teaches English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Strathclyde. She has published widely in magazines and literary journals, and her pamphlet, Bone Song, was shortlisted for the 2009 Michael Marks Pamphlet Award. Her second pamphlet, Shadow Dispatches, won the 2012 Mslexia Pamphlet Prize and is published by Seren.
