Vanessa Gebbie's debut collection explores the fragility and fleetingness of existence set against the enduring influence of people, places and events, even as they pass deeper into history. Disused mines and old theatres become haunted spaces, where the presence of something or someone left behind lingers. Vanessa's war poems, inspired by the life of her late father (a decorated WWII veteran) and by visits to the battlefields of Picardy and Flanders in the company of military historians, bring to life the bravery of servicemen. The poet challenges the boundary between war and nature. Upholding the legacy of her father and the soldier's endeavour, she weaves together the understanding of a located family and the desperation of war. These sophisticated descriptions produce a sepia world created by the fervent need to love and remember.
Publisher: Pighog
ISBN: 9781906309626
Number of pages: 35
Weight: 135 g
Dimensions: 250 x 175 x 4 mm
"A gift for breathtaking associative leaps combined with a deep humanity marks Vanessa Gebbie as outstanding. The prize-winning poem 'Immensi tremor oceani' is a prime example, yet her pyrotechnics are always emotionally grounded. Whether the subject is the sea, war veterans, or a dying father, the poems in this debut "sing constellations to their rest". Pascale Petit "In this astonishing debut, Vanessa Gebbie's poetry is fully engaged with the physical world - poems full of exhilarating sound-play and dazzling visual imagery. Unsentimental, compassionate, nuanced, this is a writer who invites language to dance and sing. Many of these poems bear witness to the complexities and frustrations of ageing, but never stop being about love." Catherine Smith "Vanessa Gebbie's poems create small worlds in a few well-chosen images that surprise but interlock like scenes in a film. Through her portraits of her father, the series of war poems and through forgotten landscapes, she writes beautifully of absence, of loss, and of the things we can't let go." Andrew Forster
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