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The Slain Birds (Paperback)
Loot Price: R302
Discovery Miles 3 020
You Save: R73
(19%)
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The Slain Birds (Paperback)
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List price R375
Loot Price R302
Discovery Miles 3 020
You Save R73 (19%)
Expected to ship within 9 - 15 working days
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**WINNER OF THE 2022 FELTRINELLI INTERNATIONAL POETRY PRIZE ** 'One
of the most perfect poets alive. There is something in his work
both ancient and modern. I read him as I might check the sky for
stars.' Sebastian Barry Michael Longley's new collection takes its
title from Dylan Thomas - 'for the sake of the souls of the slain
birds sailing'. The Slain Birds encompasses souls, slayings and
many birds, both dead and alive. The first poem laments a tawny owl
killed by a car. That owl reappears later in 'Totem', which
represents the book itself as 'a star-surrounded totem pole/ With
carvings of all the creatures'. 'Slain birds' exemplify our impact
on the creatures and the planet. But, in this book's cosmic
ecological scheme, birds are predators too, and coronavirus is 'the
merlin we cannot see'. Longley's soul-landscape seems increasingly
haunted by death, as he revisits the Great War, the Holocaust and
Homeric bloodshed, with their implied counterparts today. Yet his
microcosmic Carrigskeewaun remains a precarious 'home' for the
human family. It engenders 'Otter-sightings, elvers, leverets,
poetry'. Among Longley's images for poetry are crafts that conserve
or recycle natural materials: carving, silversmithing, woodturning,
embroidery. This suggests the versatility with which he remakes his
own art. Two granddaughters 'weave a web from coloured strings' and
hang it up 'to trap a big idea'. The interlacing lyrics of The
Slain Birds are such a web.
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