Here on Earth

Jeffrey Wainwright

• Publisher: Carcanet Poetry
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781800172753
• eBook ISBN: 9781800172760
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Poesía europea

We are still here on earth. With a troubled sense of wonder, Jeffrey Wainwright's new book witnesses to that earth's ordinariness, profusion and mystery. The collection begins with his beginning, a poem that evokes his own birth: 'Here I Come'. He concludes inevitably with 'Here I Go'.

In between are poems that describe and contemplate on the variety of life, ranging from a fleeing mouse to geology and gravity. History features, as so often in his poetry, with the earth's transition from inanimate matter to the fearsome and various place we know. There is a sequence on contemporary Manchester, another on the domestic and wider presence of coal, and a series on the iniquities of the British Empire – histories that connect and contend with one another.

Describing this last sequence, Shirley Chew notes the poet's 'preoccupation with words and history', his 'self-reflexive wit' and the 'wry look' he takes at the poet's art itself. He is a master of tones of voice, of registers, of patterns and rhythms, and his characteristic inventiveness is everywhere to be found in this book which touches on so many timely and timeless concerns Here on Earth.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Here I come
• The Day Begins
• Nature Notes
• Disillusionment
• Landscape
• A batch of frail flowers
• Walking in the Rain
• A Rectangular Garden
• Parmenides on the Boardwalk
• Fire-smoke
• The Lucky Tree
• Trees Falling
• Standard Model
• Here on Earth
• Pieces of Coal
• Trip Advisor and the Diglake Disaster
• Empire News
• Coverdale
• Antique Camelias
• Mug and Jug
• Bacon’s Dog
• Two Pianos
• Did I really do this?
• Perce
• The Shades
• The Window Again
• Interval
• Here I Go
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Copyright