Book picks similar to
Hard Water by Jean Sprackland


poetry
nature
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To The Women: words to live by


Donna Ashworth - 2020
    

Nigh-No-Place


Jen Hadfield - 2008
    Her first book, Almanacs, was a travellers's litany, featuring a road movie in poems set in the north of Scotland. Nigh-No-Place is the liturgy of a poet passionately aware of the natural world." Nigh-No-Place reflects the breadth of ground she's covered. 'Ten-minute Break Haiku' is her response to working in a fish factory. 'Paternoster' is the Lord's Prayer uttered by a draught-horse. 'Prenatal Polar Bear' takes place in Churchill, Manitoba, surrounded by tundra.

Us


Zaffar Kunial - 2018
    S. Eliot Prize'Rich in form and reverent references, Us transports the reader from the hills of Pakistan to the schoolgrounds of Stratford-upon-Avon, from George Herbert to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.' (Maria Crawford, Financial Times, BOOKS OF THE YEAR)'Highlights of the year include the Heaney-esque lyricism of British-Indian poet Zaffar Kunial's accomplished debut Us.' (Tristram Fane Saunders, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year)'Zaffar Kunial possesses that rare quality of negative capability which Keats first identified in Shakespeare (a guiding spirit in this, Kunial’s first collection); the poems hold us among mysteries and doubts, without pronouncing or attempting to resolve. Their beauty lies in their indecisiveness – their quiet refusal to settle matters or hold to a single view.' (Rebecca Watts, Times Literary Supplement)'His first full book, which has come together slowly, patiently, over several years... He can do clear-eyed and tender inside a single poem, without any hint of glibness. Fun fact: he used to earn his living writing verse for Hallmark cards.'(The 20 best poetry books of 2018, The Spinoff, New Zealand)'Everyone in this book is honoured as complicated and contrary, while the writing of them is always subtle and deep, generous and empathetic.' (Tim Dee, Caught by the River)'Zaffar Kunial has been called “a guide for modern times”. His first collection Us travels from Pakistan to Stratford-upon-Avon to Orkney, as he explores his own cultural heritage through language. Kunial is interested in how two disparate elements can come together to create something new. He is more formal than many modern poets; he takes tradition seriously. His writing is subtle, thoughtful and precise, his view of the world utterly individual.' (FOLD magazine)'Zaffar Kunial is a poet whose work thrills me, who makes you return to the origins of things, places, language and people again and again. He's a poet who takes traditions seriously but makes of them something entirely new - a must.' (Jackie Kay)'Us by Zaffar Kunial abounds with poems which are witty, playful and heart-breaking by turns. Drawn to the place where things don't quite meet, which he describes as "a kind of abysmal underneathness/or usness/under the heights of language", his is a wondrous poetic of loopholes, portals and translations, and of the magic in-between.' (Sinead Morrissey, Chair of the T. S. Eliot Prize judges)'There's something about the precise, thoughtful, unhurried way in which he interrogates language that marks him out as a unique talent. A real find.' (Roger Cox, Scotsman)

The Wrecking Light


Robin Robertson - 2010
    These poems are written with the authority of classical myth, yet sound utterly contemporary: the poet's gaze - whether on the natural world or the details of his own life - is unflinching and clear, its utter seriousness leavened by a wry, dry and disarming humour. Alongside fine translations from Neruda and Montale and dynamic (and at times horrific) retellings of stories from Ovid, the poems in "The Wrecking Light" pitch the power and wonder of nature against the frailty and failure of the human. Ghosts sift through these poems - certainties become volatile, the simplest situations thicken with strangeness and threat - all of them haunted by the pressure and presence of the primitive world against our own, and the kind of dream-like intensity of description that has become Robertson's trademark. This is a book of considerable grandeur and sweep which confirms Robertson as one of the most arresting and powerful poets at work today.

Black Country


Liz Berry - 2014
    The poems move from the magic of childhood – bostin fittle at Nanny’s, summers before school – into deeper, darker territory: sensual love, enchanted weddings, and the promise of new life.In Berry’s hands, the ordinary is transformed: her characters shift shapes, her eye is unusual, her ear attuned to the sounds of the Black Country, with ‘vowels ferrous as nails, consonants / you could lick the coal from.’ Ablaze with energy and full of the rich dialect of the West Midlands, this is an incandescent debut from a poet of dazzling talent and verve.

A Rustic Mind


Manali Manan Desai - 2018
    Through ‘A Rustic Mind’ I aim to provide a thoughtful take on such actions and incidents. Poetic in its expression, these words will strike a chord which is not only deep but relatable on many levels.

Rhythm of Remembrance


Samir Satam - 2020
    – Shubhangi Swarup (Latitudes of Longing)

A Mayan Astronomer in Hell's Kitchen


Martín Espada - 2000
    There are conquerors, slaves, and rebels from Caribbean history; the "Mayan astronomer" calmly smoking a cigarette in the middle of a New York tenement fire; a nun staging a White House vigil to protest her torture; a man on death row mourning the loss of his books; and even Carmen Miranda.

The Dear Queen Journey


Sylvester McNutt III - 2015
    After being ejected as collateral via my parent's breakup; After being lied to, cheated on and subtracted from all equations of love; I determined that things were not adding up any more. I knew that I deserved to be loved everyday, not only with words but with actions. I found a great deal of power in learning about love. I had been confused this whole time as I believed what we were all taught to believe as children - that love was something you find inside of another person. This journey allowed me to heal, forgive and accelerate my life towards love. Our journeys have different titles but we are all out here walking together toward the same goal. People with different skin tones, speech variations and socie-economic status all deserve love. This is The Dear Queen Journey: A Path To Self Love.

No Map Could Show Them


Helen Mort - 2016
    No Map Could Show Them confirms Helen Mort’s position as one of the finest young poets at work today.

You Must Buy Your Wife At Least As Much Jewelry As You Buy Your Horse and Other Poems and Observations Humorous and Otherwise from the Life on the Range


Dalton Wilcox - 2012
    The wit and wisdom of the West, as documented by Dalton Wilcox, poet laureate of the West.

One NRI Girl


Rupi Kaur - 2019
    She is working as a software engineer in an investment bank in USA. She has money ($$$$), she can afford sex outside marriage. She also has opinion on everything. She is dating various marriage prospects, will she get her dream guy?

Valley Walls: A Memoir of Climbing and Living in Yosemite


Glen Denny - 2016
    Photographer Glen Denny was a key figure in this golden age of climbing, capturing pioneering feats on camera while tackling challenging ascents himself.In entertaining short pieces enlivened by his iconic black-and-white images of Yosemite's big wall legends, Denny reveals a young man's coming of age and provides a vivid look at Yosemite’s early climbing culture. He relates such precarious achievements as hauling water in glass gallon jugs up the east face of Washington Column, nailing the 750-foot Rostrum in a punishing heat wave, and dangling overnight on El Capitan’s Dihedral Wall in a lightning storm. Each true tale captures the spirit of historic Camp 4, where Denny and others plan the next big climb while living on the cheap and dodging park rangers.

Coyote's Canyon


Terry Tempest Williams - 1989
    This is Coyote's country--a landscape of the imagination, where nothing is as it appears.

Hourglass Museum


Kelli Russell Agodon - 2010
    Her uniquely true and mystical voice is like a glass of pure water: refreshing, healing, and oh, so necessary."—Nin Andrews"Her poems are an intense vision of the power of art to heal, to help us understand ourselves and our world. Agodon invokes artists as disparate as Kahlo and Cornell, Picasso and Pollock, as a way into the world she creates for us in her deft and musical poems. She brilliantly succeeds."—Wyn CooperKelli Russell Agodon is the author of two previous collections of poetry and lives in Kingston, Washington.