At the Source: A Writer's Year

New
Illustrated
2008
$13.77

At the Source reflects upon a writer's deep inheritance of language, myth and nature. Her creative journeys begin from those sources. The book opens with a house, Blaen Cwrt. A river rises, a tributary which will flow on to the Atlantic, and a family has its roots there. There the Welsh poet Gillian Clarke writes in what was the byre, looking across a landscape worked and imagined by generations of farmers and poets. Six chapters explore the relationship of places and languages, culture and family, geology and myth, in a poet's imagination. At the heart of the book is a journal of the writer's year. Lyrical, wise, meticulously observant, often humorous, Clarke records the experience of living and working on the land, observing the world from a particular place, the continuity and remaking of the source.

Synopsis

At the Source reflects upon a writer's deep inheritance of language, myth and nature. Her creative journeys begin from those sources. The book opens with a house, Blaen Cwrt. A river rises, a tributary which will flow on to the Atlantic, and a family has its roots there. There the Welsh poet Gillian Clarke writes in what was the byre, looking across a landscape worked and imagined by generations of farmers and poets. Six chapters explore the relationship of places and languages, culture and family, geology and myth, in a poet's imagination. At the heart of the book is a journal of the writer's year. Lyrical, wise, meticulously observant, often humorous, Clarke records the experience of living and working on the land, observing the world from a particular place, the continuity and remaking of the source.

$13.77

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More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 320
Edition: Illustrated
Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd
Published: 06 May 2008
ISBN 10: 1857549864
ISBN 13: 9781857549867

Media Reviews

'Gillian Clarke's outer and inner landscapes are the sources from which her poetry draws its strengths.' - Carol Ann Duffy, Guardian. 'Gillian Clarke's [poems] ring with lucidity and power...Clarke's work is both personal and archetypal, built out of language as concrete as it is musical.' - Anne Stevenson, Times Literary Supplement.

Author Bio

Born in Cardiff, Gillian Clarke is Wales's best-loved poet. She is also a playwright, editor, broadcaster, lecturer and translator (from the Welsh). She edited the Anglo-Welsh Review (1975-1984) and is a former president of Ty Newydd, the writers' centre in North Wales which she co-founded in 1990. Since 1994 she has been a tutor in Creative Writing at the University of Glamorgan. Clarke was the inaugural Capital Poet for Cardiff 2005-6. Carcanet publish many of her books.