Listening to the Future
Will be published approx. on 25. February 2027
Book
Paperback/Softback
80 pages
978-1-78037-811-4 (ISBN)
Description
Robyn Bolam's evocative poems in Listening to the Future speak through birdsong, lightning and rain, the rumble of a landslip, sounds of the sea, even humming giraffes - about our relationships with our planet, its creatures and each other.
They connect a Dorset cottage with Middle East conflict, a New Forest saltmarsh with Ukraine and a Turkey-Syria earthquake, an exultation of skylarks with lost Amazonian children, and a teenager's Tyneside with the moon landings. They ask: to whom, or what should we be listening - and how, keeping love at the heart of everything, can we, as Voltaire wrote, 'give ourselves the gift of living well'?
Listening to the Future celebrates passions, perseverance and the endeavours of those who dare to look ahead, from Anne Boleyn, Gilbert White, T. E. Lawrence and the first swallow, to artists, explorers, pioneers and survivors everywhere.
Listening to the Future is Robyn Bolam's fifth poetry collection and her first since Hyem (2017). Her earlier work is available in New Wings: Poems 1977-2007 (2007), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
They connect a Dorset cottage with Middle East conflict, a New Forest saltmarsh with Ukraine and a Turkey-Syria earthquake, an exultation of skylarks with lost Amazonian children, and a teenager's Tyneside with the moon landings. They ask: to whom, or what should we be listening - and how, keeping love at the heart of everything, can we, as Voltaire wrote, 'give ourselves the gift of living well'?
Listening to the Future celebrates passions, perseverance and the endeavours of those who dare to look ahead, from Anne Boleyn, Gilbert White, T. E. Lawrence and the first swallow, to artists, explorers, pioneers and survivors everywhere.
Listening to the Future is Robyn Bolam's fifth poetry collection and her first since Hyem (2017). Her earlier work is available in New Wings: Poems 1977-2007 (2007), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
Reviews / Votes
There is calm acceptance of mystery; there is precise observation... and carefully sustained metaphor...and in all of this, there is the poet's trust in her own perceptions, which are at once worldly and otherworldly. -- Lavinia Greenlaw & Alan Jenkins * PBS Bulletin, on New Wings * Compelling and accomplished...a poet of unusual talent. -- Bernard O'Donoghue * Times Literary Supplement, on The Peepshow Girl * Robyn Bolam's Hyem is a carefully constructed collection of poems that are scrupulously crafted and rooted in authentic experience. The images are well observed and to the point, yet frequently resonate beyond the circumstances that have inspired them. It's a collection that allows you to feel and makes you think. It is one also to which you can return with renewed pleasure. -- David Cooke * The High Window *More details
Edition
Paperback original
Language
English
Place of publication
Tyne and Wear
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (UK-trade)
Illustrations
2 Halftones, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 8 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-78037-811-4 (9781780378114)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Robyn Bolam, freelance poet, editor and reviewer, was born in Newcastle, grew up in Northumberland and now lives in Hampshire. She is Emeritus Professor at St Mary's University, a former Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Southampton University and RLF Lector on the Isle of Wight. In 2016-17, she led the community-based, combined arts Ferry Tales Project which was supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. She has published four books of poetry with Bloodaxe, The Peepshow Girl (1989), Raiding the Borders (1996), New Wings: Poems 1977-2007 (2007), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, Hyem (2017) and Listening to the Future (2027). She is the editor of the anthology, Eliza's Babes: Four Centuries of Women's Poetry in English (Bloodaxe Books, 2005), and of five seventeenth-century plays.
In 1981 she received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors and won first prize in the Cheltenham Festival Poetry Competition. Her libretto for the opera Beyond Men and Dreams (composer Bennett Hogg) was performed by the Royal Opera House Garden Venture in 1991. She was awarded a Hawthornden International Fellowship in 1993, held a British Council writing residency at the University of Stockholm in 1998, and was Writer in Residence at the University of Reading in 2010-11. She has given readings of her poetry in Britain, Portugal, Sweden, Romania, USA and Japan.
In 1981 she received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors and won first prize in the Cheltenham Festival Poetry Competition. Her libretto for the opera Beyond Men and Dreams (composer Bennett Hogg) was performed by the Royal Opera House Garden Venture in 1991. She was awarded a Hawthornden International Fellowship in 1993, held a British Council writing residency at the University of Stockholm in 1998, and was Writer in Residence at the University of Reading in 2010-11. She has given readings of her poetry in Britain, Portugal, Sweden, Romania, USA and Japan.