Blood Feather

Description

A clear-sighted, intimate new poetry collection from the prizewinning author of Other People's Countries and Throw me to the Wolves By the author of Other People's Countries and Throw Me to the Wolves In Blood Feather, a book of doubling and displacement, we see time in a new way- the past, personal and collective, lingering as an ever-present ghost - while lost beyond recall. The first section, 'Mother as Spy' - a series of deeply moving poems about his mother, displaced between languages - investigates her illness and death; how being bilingual is like having a double, a second self; how each self haunts the other. 'The Cooling Towers of Didcot' elegises today's post-industrial landscapes, their people and professions- sidelined by literature, bypassed by globalisation. The final sequence, 'After the Flood', links the book's themes, seeking a way of seeing things for the first time and the last time simultaneously. Exploring the gaps between languages and between our selves in language, Patrick McGuinness dreams of a new tense in which the world's losses are redeemed- 'It's the anniversary of my mother's death, and it's my mother's birthday - the day she short-circuited the tenses, made the current flow both ways.' In his intimate, confiding voice, McGuinness shows how identity is layered, permeable, always in motion - how we are always actor and audience to ourselves.

Patrick McGuinness is the author of two previous books of poetry, two novels, The Last Hundred Days and Throw Me to the Wolves, and a non-fiction book about place, time and memory, and his mother's small Belgian border town of Bouillon - Other People's Countries - which was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley Prize and the James Tait Black Prize, won the Wales Book of the Year, and the Duff Cooper Prize. He is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at St Anne's College, Oxford.

'This is a deeply moving book of poems. A son searches for his mother in the thin places - the ghost stations, the sadness factories, the memories and nightmares - negotiating between two languages which are never enough and always too much. Shimmering with the "sweet dark syrup" of humour, and gorgeous sleights of imagery, these are poems of extraordinary grace; they come up for air with their cupped hands empty, yet brimming with light.' -- Fiona Benson 'Patrick McGuinness writes of the other country of childhood with Proustian elan and Nabokovian delight.' -- John Banville 'The brilliance of Patrick McGuinness's writing has made his memories unforgettable to the reader.' -- Adam Foulds 'An extraordinary writer of great compassion.' -- Denise Mina