Jane Clarke's third collection is far-reaching and yet precisely rooted in time and place. In luminous language her poems explore how people, landscape and culture shape us. Voices of the past and present reverberate with courage and resilience in the face of poverty, prejudice, war and exile and the everyday losses of living. Across six sequences these intimate poems of unembellished imagery accrue power and resonance in what is essentially a book of love poems to our beautiful, fragile world. A Change in the Air follows Jane Clarke's widely praised previous collections The River (2015) and When the Tree Falls (2019).
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Now that her heart is bent overlike a larkspur after a storm,she stays in bed past milking time,pulling the quilt tight around her shoulders,until her Collie barks her down the stairs.AFTER
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(Bloodaxe Books, 25 May 2023, e-book, 80 pages, #ARC from the publisher via Edelweiss+)
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I enjoyed A Change In The Air a lot. This is a new poet for me and I haven't read any of her work before. I enjoyed all of the poems in this collection. A lot of them touch on nature and the human world, subject matter that usually leaves me cold but I enjoyed the way the poet tackles these subjects. The poems are well written, engaging and full of powerful imagery. I particularly enjoyed Raspberries, The Pay, Ling and You Could Say It Begins.
