Unexpected Weather
Abi Curtis(Author)
Salt Publishing
Published on 8. June 2009
Book
Hardback
80 pages
978-1-84471-565-7 (ISBN)
Description
Abi Curtis makes the familiar extraordinary, and the supernatural everyday. In poems about animals and clouds, scientists and circus performers, about love and bean-pods, about bruises and myths and the moments before death, her deft use and playful subversions of form give her verse an exquisite poise between gravity and lightness. Unexpected Weather has surprises on every page: sensuous surfaces upturned with a single word, moments frozen and held up for inspection, riddles, mishearings and tricks of the light. The collection is divided into two parts, each of them named for just such a trick: a mirage and a phosphorescence, the one an illusion, seemingly real, the other quite natural, but spectral and eerie. Both create atmospheric effects no less beautiful for their irreality. They are perfect figures for Curtis's poetry, for her way of conjuring characters, worlds, mythologies and histories out of wisps of experience; but most of all for her delight in metaphor, the medium of condensation and transformation, in which she makes the world limpid, and new.
Reviews / Votes
The work delighted me at times, able to capture claustrophobic and breathlessly open experiences, all with a very personal eye, looking at the self in private and social contexts. -- George Ttoouli * Gists and Piths * Curtis never tells you things you already know - she tells you things you are, things you've always felt and have never managed to put into words. It's wondrously satisfying - like being broke then finding a twenty pound note in an old pair of jeans. -- Luke Kennard * Exultations and Difficulties. * Matching Humbug's thematic strength is a structured symmetry and clarity of purpose it would be hard to miss. -- Kate Bingham * Poetry London *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Illustrations
Not illustrated
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 11 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-84471-565-7 (9781844715657)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Person
Abi Curtis's first collection Unexpected Weather was a winner of Salt's Crashaw Prize in 2008. She received an Eric Gregory Award in 2004 and holds a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Sussex. She is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing at York St John University.
Content
I: Fata Morgana
Lady Jane Grey
Loom
Death by Lightning
In-betweens
Fata Morgana
Body Baskets
George Gabriel Stokes
Soliloquy of a Molecule
Trapeze Artist
Lupercalia
Hong Kong
Rays
Tantric
Cloud
Hitching
Last Words from the Bluebird
II: Ignis Fatuus
Mole
Tyndall's Flame
Bruise
The Cupboard
Plastic
Lion-Tamer
Poem at the Edge of a Cliff
Bareback Rider
Michelangelo's Meals
The Ghost of the Nature Reserve
Owl Butterfly
The Allotment
Mycelium
Electricity
Humbug
Oz
Roundhouse
Mandibles
Bean
Lady Jane Grey
Loom
Death by Lightning
In-betweens
Fata Morgana
Body Baskets
George Gabriel Stokes
Soliloquy of a Molecule
Trapeze Artist
Lupercalia
Hong Kong
Rays
Tantric
Cloud
Hitching
Last Words from the Bluebird
II: Ignis Fatuus
Mole
Tyndall's Flame
Bruise
The Cupboard
Plastic
Lion-Tamer
Poem at the Edge of a Cliff
Bareback Rider
Michelangelo's Meals
The Ghost of the Nature Reserve
Owl Butterfly
The Allotment
Mycelium
Electricity
Humbug
Oz
Roundhouse
Mandibles
Bean