Chaotic Angels

Gwyneth Lewis was Wales's National Poet from 2005 to 2006, the first writer given the Welsh laureateship. She is a bilingual virtuoso, publishing several books in both English and Welsh. Chaotic Angels brings together the poems from her ?rst three English collections, Parables & Faxes (1995), Zero Gravity (1998) and Keeping Mum (2003). She has since published A Hospital Odyssey (2010) and Sparrow Tree (2011). 'The fact that Gwyneth Lewis writes in Welsh and English is central to the issues she addresses' Lewis is not always easy to locate as a poet, and in part this is because of her originality and her refusal to easily fall prey to current trends or trendiness. Her poetic lineage includes poets such as George Herbert, Joseph Brodsky and perhaps most prominently, W.H. Auden. And this is nowhere more evident than in her ability to resolve through poetry complex philosophical ideas, and to make the creative marriages of words and ideas that rhyme allows' - Deryn Rees-Jones, PBS Bulletin. 'She is one of very few poets to be equally probing and technically sophisticated in both languages' intuitively sensitive to the peculiarities of each' - Ruth McIlroy, Planet.