The Conversation
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
In The Conversation, Stephanie Norgate explores relationships between nature and the city, the past and present, and character and writer. Shaped through both speech and storytelling, these visual, sensuous and imaginative poems celebrate friendship, even in grief, closeness in times of isolation and lockdown, and the longing to bridge gaps and find cures. Miracles are found in the everyday, in a child’s sleep or a lit-up house. Textiles transform into remembrancers, landscape into emotion. A contemporary Daedalus views his life from a hang-glider. A scrap of handwriting, cafe talk, an exploding car, an earthquake, the naming of fields or a line of walkers ignite conversations about place, time and the tender paradoxes of mortality. Stephanie Norgate’s first collection Hidden River (2008) was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and was followed by The Blue Den (2012). The Conversation is her third collection. Her poetry has been praised for the ‘depth of its lyricism’ (Jackie Wills, Warwick Review), and for being ‘energetic and generous, and displaying a ‘feeling for place, for the roots of things’ and for being ‘searching, memorable and disconcerting … She has the ear for the music of a line and the shape and strength of an image.’ (R.V. Bailey, Artemis).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The meditative and lyrical third collection from Norgate (The Blue Den) explores memories in urban and rural landscapes. Descriptions of the natural world and of plants abound, which she writes in original and striking ways, as in "Dead Nettle in the Fann Street Wildlife Garden": "It doesn't sting and isn't dead./ Instead, the dead nettle thinks itself,/ all over the grass, huddles with the cowslips,/ nudges in with the ox-eye daisies,/ and raises its estate of honeyed towers." The title poem is one of several written in memory of poet Helen Dunmore, who died from cancer in 2017. In "The Conversation," Norgate writes: "Now our words need a new measure of time,/ syllables for seconds, sonnets for minutes,/ epics for hours – this is our café society." The loss is poignantly palpable in "The Summoner of Birds": "Mostly, what I miss/ in these soon after days, is our talk,/ what I would have said, what you/ would have made of this." The final poem opens on a lovely description of birds: "All day, the rook flies/ its shadow self over the half-moons/ of the tussock's shade." This elegiac collection pays wonderful attention to detail in language that frequently stands out for its beauty.
