Earth House
-
- ¥1,400
-
- ¥1,400
発行者による作品情報
In Earth House, Matthew Hollis evokes the landscape, language and ecology of the isles of Britain and Ireland to explore how our most intimate moments have resonance in the wider cycle of life. Beginning in the slate waters of the north, the book revolves around the cardinal points and the ancient elements: through the wide skies of the east and the terrain of a southern city, to the embers of places lost to us, to which we can no longer return.
What emerges is a moving meditation on time and the transformative phases of nature that calls many forces into its presence – the wisdoms of Anglo-Saxon verse, the metamorphoses of Norse and Celtic myth, the stoicism of classical thought and the far east – unforgettably phrased by a writer who, in the words of the TLS, ‘makes the language of his poetry an event in itself’. Subtly attuned to the rhythms of the turning world, these poems open with the passing of an old life and culminate in the birth of a new one. They bravely work the seam between the present and the past, between destruction and renewal, humanity and our environment, and make Earth House a timeless exploration of our timed encounter with the remarkable lives of our planet.
Earth House is Matthew Hollis’s long awaited follow up to Ground Water (2004), shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Whitbread Poetry Award. He is the author of Now All Roads Lead to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas and The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem, recipients of the Costa Award for Biography and Sunday Times Biography of the Year.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hollis's beautiful sophomore volume (after Ground Water) lyrically explores the essence of time, language, and ecology in poems about Britain and Ireland. The book is thoughtfully and effectively divided around the four cardinal points, beginning in the north, "in residue and wrack;/ the tide drawing off the asphalt." Highlighting Hollis's superb gift for lyricism and imagery, this section features the glorious "Stones," which opens with "The sea is a land in waiting./ Each morning, each evening/ it turns out its pockets for the strandline:/ a starfish plaything, an unwrapped cuttle,/ some days a mermaid's purse." The next section moves east and contains the equally memorable "A Harnser for James": "Gillying on Blakeney quay,/ your young hands harrying the line// as another crab gives up its grip/ for the safety of the estuary,/ and your five-year face flares with frustration/ at this world so slow to reward." Other poems allude to Celtic and Norse myth: "when I saw the turbines// turning out to sea, I thought of Mjölnir/ whirling on its wrist of god,// or some equal engine of the uncurated earth,/ and watched the rain drag its linen over Lincolnshire." With great sensitivity to language, Hollis reminds readers of the landscape's ancient and renewing music.
