The Blue Book

Welsh poet, Owen Sheers's first collection has already garnered much critical acclaim. He was selected by The Times as Poet of the New Millennium, and this book won the prestigious Eric Gregory Award, given to first collections. At once, an exquisite observation of the life-affirming landscape that surrounds him, Sheers' poetry too describes the fruitless cruelty and suffering caused by human frailty. The ghost of death looms large in many of the poems, where memory and language struggle to contend with the enormity of emotion. And yet, his own language is driven by the need to get to the root of physical life and emotion -- his language raw and organic, eschewing the traditional aesthetics of nature with sensual and faithful evocations. This is a new collection of significant poetic value and resonance.