www.gwales.com - 9781854115249, Brittle Sea, The

ISBN: 9781854115249 (1854115243)Publication Date October 2010
Publisher: Seren, BridgendFormat: Paperback, 215x140 mm, 180 pages Language: English Available Our Price: £9.99

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Brittle Sea, The - New and Selected Poems

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Gwales Description

The Brittle Sea - New and Selected Poems by Welsh writer Paul Henry features a substantial selection from his five previous books along with a section of new work that includes his popular poems on Welsh Rugby.

Casgliad o gerddi Paul Henry. Ceir yma cerddi newydd yn ogystal â rhai sydd eisoes wedi'u cyhoeddi. Ymhlith ei gerddi poblogaidd y mae'r rhai sy'n sôn am rygbi Cymru.

Gwales Review

This selection spans Paul Henry's collections from 1991 to 2007 and then adds 25 new poems, some of which re-visit old friends such as Prydwen Jane and Nightingale Ann who appeared in 'The Milk Thief’ some ten years earlier. The flavour of the new poems is of reminiscence, loss and running out of time. In ‘Penllain’ he begins:

‘In love with an absence
I have wasted my days
believing in this house.’
but then longingly calls back his 'limpet ghosts'.

He has always been a singer and the lyrical qualities are evident throughout this selection as well as in the rather elegiac new work. The lively characters of the earliest work – boys building a bonfire, old women on a bus, ploughmen and teachers – were, even then, figures of recollection but the poems in this work seem more and more haunted by absent or lost loves. The tenderness of the poems about his sons – ‘Bunk-beds’ and ‘Daylight Robbery’ – give added poignancy to ‘The Black Guitar’ and the rather sinister ‘Three Trees’. 'The Slipped Leash' is an almost unbearable evocation of loss when ‘Today was loving you again’.

The reader can trace through the years his favourite imagery, of sea, sand, violins and leaves (and his sudden leaps into a surreal or magical landscape like the visions of Chagall or of Henry's friend Goble) so that the images in the later poems gain weight and resonance as they develop and change. Yet although, through his poetry, images and themes shape and pattern life, the recurring sense is of life slipping away like sand, or water, or fading music. His later poems do ‘prove it is not too late to sing’ (‘Arcades’) but, as in ‘Moonlight’, the music seems an act of defiance against the encroaching darkness.

Caroline Clark

It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgment should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.

Gellir defnyddio'r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatâd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.

The following has been provided by the Publisher:

Author Biography:

Paul Henry was born in Aberystwyth and came to poetry through songwriting. Described by the late U.A. Fanthorpe as “a poet’s poet” who combines “a sense of the music of words with an endlessly inventive imagination”, his work has been widely anthologised and regularly appears in journals as diverse as Poetry Wales and The TLS. A popular creative writing tutor, he ran the Ledbury Festival’s Poetry Cafe at Hereford’s Courtyard theatre and is a regular tutor at Ty Newydd, Wales’s national writers’ centre. Mari d’Ingrid, a translation of his fifth and most recent collection, Ingrid’s Husband, (Seren), recently appeared from L’Harmattan. He also works as an associate lecturer at the University of Glamorgan and as a radio presenter. He lives in Crickhowell, Powys.

Further Information:

This substantial selection from the work of Paul Henry confirms that he has, over two decades, been quietly building an ouvre of beautifully crafted poems. And, by popular request, in the “new poems” section, rugby fans will find the three poems Henry was commissioned to write for BBC2’s ‘Poetry in Motion’, which celebrated the Welsh national rugby team as they prepared for the 2008 rugby world cup. Born in Aberystwyth on the west coast of Wales, into a family of musicians, music pervades his poems on childhood, as do a large cast of aunts, neighbours, friends and relations, many of whom appear in Dylan Thomas-like character sketches. Henry doesn’t pin his characters down but allows them to flourish as archetypes, evokes their history and context with a rare empathy and a lyrical lightness of touch. Some of his earliest portrait-poems are set against the Breconshire villages where Henry lived from his mid teens, a move south to Newport, Gwent, inspires poems about the undulating river Usk and the post-industrial cityscape and its impact on people’s lives. The individual human voice, the ragged vagaries of the heart and soul, the joys and sorrows of family life feature here but this poetry is personal without being confessional, preferring tender observation to sensationalism or didacticism. For a poet well-known for one-page lyrics it is instructive to be reminded of several of his longer sequences, such as those in ‘The Shell House’ which vary in tone per section, much like a concerto or musical piece.

Last Updated on 19 October 2011

Further Information

With an artist’s eye for the evocative vignette and the songwriter’s musicality of diction, Paul Henry has quietly established himself as one of Wales’s most accomplished poets. Unerringly pinpointing the telling, unconsidered details of familiar sights and feelings, his poetry yields a depth and richness under its unassuming surface.

Homely images surprise as they effortlessly unfold into new and unexpected contexts, or confront the extraordinary or absurd – like the dead turtle on a Welsh beach or a priest blessing a newly-installed garden shed. A host of memorable characters come and go, from children exploring their environment through kaleidoscopic vision, to the elderly in their shrinking world, preserving in their rituals the relics of a lost way of life. Past and present are encapsulated in fleeting, significant moments to be revisited with new insights and deep affection. As we move from small town to rural community to city streets, the sea of Henry’s childhood is never fully absent as the mood shifts like the tide from the familiar to the mysterious and unsettling, and from comic to elegiac.

Deeply-rooted in his native Wales, in family and community, Paul Henry’s poems are never parochial but explore universal themes and experiences, from the finding and losing of love to the complex joys of fatherhood and friendship. The Brittle Sea combines 25 new poems with a selection drawn from his five previous collections, to create a lyrical, haunting narrative of the last twenty years.

Cyfnewidfa Lên Cymru/Wales Literature Exchange

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