The Half-Life of Fathers
Published on 3. October 2013
Book
Pamphlet
35 pages
978-1-906309-62-6 (ISBN)
Description
Vanessa Gebbie's debut collection explores the fragility and fleetingness of existence set against the enduring influence of people, places and events, even as they pass deeper into history. Disused mines and old theatres become haunted spaces, where the presence of something or someone left behind lingers. Vanessa's war poems, inspired by the life of her late father (a decorated WWII veteran) and by visits to the battlefields of Picardy and Flanders in the company of military historians, bring to life the bravery of servicemen. The poet challenges the boundary between war and nature. Upholding the legacy of her father and the soldier's endeavour, she weaves together the understanding of a located family and the desperation of war. These sophisticated descriptions produce a sepia world created by the fervent need to love and remember.
Reviews / Votes
"A gift for breathtaking associative leaps combined with a deep humanity marks Vanessa Gebbie as outstanding. The prize-winning poem 'Immensi tremor oceani' is a prime example, yet her pyrotechnics are always emotionally grounded. Whether the subject is the sea, war veterans, or a dying father, the poems in this debut "sing constellations to their rest". Pascale Petit "In this astonishing debut, Vanessa Gebbie's poetry is fully engaged with the physical world - poems full of exhilarating sound-play and dazzling visual imagery. Unsentimental, compassionate, nuanced, this is a writer who invites language to dance and sing. Many of these poems bear witness to the complexities and frustrations of ageing, but never stop being about love." Catherine Smith "Vanessa Gebbie's poems create small worlds in a few well-chosen images that surprise but interlock like scenes in a film. Through her portraits of her father, the series of war poems and through forgotten landscapes, she writes beautifully of absence, of loss, and of the things we can't let go." Andrew ForsterMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Brighton
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 250 mm
Width: 175 mm
Thickness: 4 mm
Weight
135 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-906309-62-6 (9781906309626)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Vanessa Gebbie is a Welsh writer living in Sussex. She is a novelist, short fiction writer, editor and freelance creative writing tutor. Winner of the 2012 Troubadour International Poetry Competition, her poems have been published in The SHOp, Abridged, Envoi, Tears in the Fence, on Tate Modern website, Shadowtrain, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Ecletica, Alba, and in two WordAid charity anthologies. Her debut novel The Coward's Tale (Bloomsbury) was selected as a UK Financial Times 2011 Book of the Year. Her short fiction has won many awards, including a Bridport Prize, and is in several anthologies. She has two story collections out with Salt Publishing, Words from a Glass Bubble (2008), and Storm Warning: Echoes of Conflict (2010). Her short fiction has been commissioned by literary journals, the British Council, by BBC Radio 3 and for BBC Radio 4. She is contributing editor of Short Circuit, Guide to the Art of the Short Story, editions 1 and 2 (Salt). She is recipient of an Arts Council Grant for the Arts, a Hawthornden International Fellowship and a Gladstone's Library Residency. www.vanessagebbie.com
Content
Immensi tremor oceani Disused copper mine, Sunday Beara Litany Robert Mills Architectural Antiques, Bristol Landfill Seaside theatre, end of season The piss pot Ice cream Lunch with my father Going home The language of the chartered surveyor My father said 'fish' The half-life of fathers Clouds The funeral of the second father Memorial to the missing Spilled peas Butterflies, Serre Road No 2 Sapphic ode for Watcyn The meat-porters' derby Visitation Blindfold Beneath La Boisselle The passing of Ezekiel Parkes The specials - a poem for seven voices