Tag Archive for: England

Lake 32 | JLM Morton

In this debut pamphlet JLM Morton tells the story of a year in the life of a lake on Cotswold Water Park where she was poet in residence. If rainforests are the world’s lungs, wetlands are the lifeblood – the Park is set to become the largest man-made wetland in Europe, giving a home to vitally important species of bats, butterflies, fish, birds, mammals, invertebrates, plants. From brave black poplar trees among the last of their kind to the life coach white magpie, Morton writes about the many species that inhabit the lake in lyrical poems that are both stunning and poignant.

‘These rich and vital poems break the surface of waters both restorative and vulnerable—reading them, we’re immersed in another world that pools and glints out of the corner of our eyes.’ ~ Paul Farley

‘JLM Morton’s vivid, playful and potent poems in Lake 32 teem with the sounds and small lives of the waterscape, drawing the reader into their delicate aegis as inexorably as the promise of the first warm swim of spring.’ ~ Adam Horovitz

This is a Picture of Wind | JR Carpenter

This is a Picture of Wind expands upon a series of short texts written in response to the winter storms which battered south west England in early 2014, resulting in catastrophic flooding in Somerset and the destruction of the seawall and rail line at Dawlish in Devon.

Following the news in the months after these storms, writer and artist J.R. Carpenter was struck by the paradox presented by attempts to evoke through the materiality of language a force such as wind which we can only perceive indirectly through its affect. The poems that ensued are gathered in this book, accompanied by an introduction by Johanna Drucker, and a poetic afterword by Vahni Capildeo.

Part poetic almanac, part private weather diary, ​This is a Picture of Wind attempts to call attention to climate change by picturing through variations in language the disturbances and sudden absences left in the wake of wind.