Compass Light
Published on 1. August 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
144 pages
978-1-80447-159-3 (ISBN)
Description
In Compass Light we cross landscapes, unravelling time, discovering how change and journeys become a celebration of a life. Poems move through the points of the compass and across sacred sites, exploring the many different ways in which we live in time and space, and considering how our experience of time is fundamental to meaning in human life.
We are carried along through years spent in Greece, observing the markets, the ancient rhythms of village life, the sudden appearance of the gods in a violent countryside, the cycles of love, death and the earth. With a flick of the compass we find ourselves gazing across the seascapes and night skies of Cornwall and west Wales, then hurtling along on the Underground and through the East End of London.
Beautifully crafted and wildly evocative, Compass Light is a wide-ranging collection that illuminates the dazzling richness of how we perceive time, and how it makes us who and what we are.
We are carried along through years spent in Greece, observing the markets, the ancient rhythms of village life, the sudden appearance of the gods in a violent countryside, the cycles of love, death and the earth. With a flick of the compass we find ourselves gazing across the seascapes and night skies of Cornwall and west Wales, then hurtling along on the Underground and through the East End of London.
Beautifully crafted and wildly evocative, Compass Light is a wide-ranging collection that illuminates the dazzling richness of how we perceive time, and how it makes us who and what we are.
Reviews / Votes
'Hilary Davies [...] is writing joy. * TLS (on Exile and the Kingdom) * 'Hilary Davies's poetry offers the constantly surprising texture of a reality rendered in all its poignancy by the sharpness and harmony of words.' -- Grevel Lindop 'A powerful and moving collection, a pilgrimage to the centre of reality.' -- James Harpur 'Replete with love, loss, place, and time, this is a collection tracing a soul's journey, and the self's transformation.' -- Martyn Crucefix 'Tender, witty, sorrowful, prayerful by turns, ranging widely over landscapes, emotions, memories, and life's grief.' -- Penelope Shuttle 'Moving, subtle but accessible, beautifully vivid poems.' -- Rowan WilliamsMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Card cover
With flaps
Dimensions
Height: 130 mm
Width: 199 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
150 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-80447-159-3 (9781804471593)
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
Hilary Davies is poet, former Chair of the Poetry Society, a Hawthornden fellow, and an Eric Gregory Award Winner. She was Royal Literary Fund Fellow at King's College, London 2012-16 and at the British Library 2018-19. She is also a Fellow of the English Association and of the Temenos Academy. In November 2023 she was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Environmental Poet of the Year Award. She has previously published four collections of poetry from Enitharmon and is also a translator, essayist and critic.