Woodslane | Book - 9781800173552

Quick Search Category Search Publisher Search Bulk Search Clear Search

Popular Subjects

Woodslane Online Catalogues

Add to Cart

Child Ballad

ISBN-13: 9781800173552
Publisher: CARCANET PRESS
Imprint: CARCANET PRESS
By David Wheatley
Price: AUD $29.99
Stock: 13 in stock
Availability: Order will be despatched as soon as possible.
Local release date: 01/02/2024
Format: Paperback (216.00mm X 135.00mm) 80 pages Weight: 180g
Categories: Poetry by individual poets [DCF]

Description

Author Biography

Sales Points

Google Preview

In Child Ballad, David Wheatleys sixth collection, he explores a world transformed by the experience of parenthood. Conducting his children through landscapes of Northern Scotland, he follows pathways laid down by departed Irish missionaries and by wolves. He maps a rich territory of rivers, trees and mountains. Also present are histories, some evidenced, some no longer visible and yet to be inferred. Stylistically, Child Ballad is multifaceted, drawing on influences from the Scottish ballad tradition and the Gaelic bards, on French symbolism and on the American Objectivists. Wheatley is an Irish poet living and teaching in Scotland: as a cultural corridor, his Scotland is a space of migrations and palimpsests, different traditions held in dynamic balance and fusion. Writing across geographical and historical distances as he does, Wheatley develops an aesthetic of complex intimacy, alert to questions of memory and loss, communicating the ache of the here and now. He sees through the eyes of young children and the world looks very different in its gifts and threats. He provides intimate descriptions of parenthood and descriptions of a Northern Scottish natural world. He deploys an ambitious range of poetic styles and forms. His poems put deep roots down into history and geology, and with translation into other languages. Themes of migration and politics are never far away. Child Ballad sings of midlife, of resettlement and marriage as well as parenthood.

David Wheatley was born in Dublin in 1970. He is the author of five previous collections of poetry, including The President of Planet Earth (Carcanet, 2017) and various other books including a novel, Stretto (CB Editions, 2022); he has also co-edited with Ailbhe Darcy The Cambridge History of Irish Women’s Poetry (Cambridge UP, 2021). He lives in rural Aberdeenshire with his family.

• Previous collection The President of Planet Earth was shortlisted for the 2018 Irish Times Poetry Now Award

• Wheatley’s sixth collection is a celebratory exploration of a world transformed by the experience of parenthood

• An Irish poet living in Scotland, he writes across geographical and historical distances to explore themes of migration, politics, midlife and marriage

• Includes vivid descriptions of Northern Scottish landscapes and the natural world, drawing on the Scottish ballad tradition to the Gaelic bards

Google Preview content