Words From the Wall

These remarkable poems are despatches from the edges of experience: from the remote coast of northern Iceland where tree-trunks and dead whales lie beached, to the furthest outposts of the Roman empire in the title poem – ‘From the very limit of the world,/Flavius sends you greetings, my lord.’ The collection is concerned with borders and brinks – the liminal spaces where distinctions blur between outer and inner, known and unknown, between what is familiar and what is other. This is the terrain of the displaced and deracinated but also the shimmering space where all is volatile, mutable, in flux – and it is also, of course, the thin, transparent veil between waking and sleep, between life and death.

Shadowed by mortality, lit by lyrical grace, Words from the Wall includes poems about the killing fields of Agincourt, Flanders, Vietnam and a memorial poem to the victims of the 2015 Bataclan attack where the dead are ‘stations of flame’, and it begins and ends at the boundaries of the Roman territory, at the edge of life: ‘The girls I laughed with once/in the baths’ atrium/are withered and wattle-necked./I love them still…’

Aceste poezii remarcabile sunt expeditii de la marginile experientei: de pe coasta indepartata a nordului Islandei, unde se afla plajele trunchiurilor de copaci si balenelor moarte, pana la cele mai indepartate avanposturi ale imperiului roman din poemul titlu - „De la limita lumii, / Flavius iti trimite salutari, stapane. ' Colectia se refera la margini si margini - spatiile liminale in care se estompeaza distinctiile dintre exterior si interior, cunoscut si necunoscut, intre ceea ce este familiar si ceea ce este altul.