Ghost River
Published on 25. May 2023
Book
Paperback/Softback
72 pages
978-1-78037-647-9 (ISBN)
Description
Ghost River invites readers to stare down blue-mouthed crevasses, venture into old growth forests, and peer beneath the floorboards of ancestral homesteads. In this lyrical and intimate portrait of America's Pacific Northwest, wilderness and home are interwoven. But this is not Arcadia. Deep time is punctured by strip malls and freeways, wildfires and dams. Questioning the influence of the past on the present, the central sequence reimagines this landscape from the perspective of the British explorer, George Vancouver, who charted its waterways on an expedition to locate the illusive Northwest Passage. In their passage between America and England and the terrain of early motherhood, these poems of loss and renewal explore what it is to be home.
Born and raised in America's Washington state, Kris Johnson moved to the UK in 2007. Ghost River is her first book-length collection.
Born and raised in America's Washington state, Kris Johnson moved to the UK in 2007. Ghost River is her first book-length collection.
Reviews / Votes
Kris Johnson's Ghost River is a book full of water - from the beautiful and dangerous lakes from the landscape of childhood to the waterways mapped by George Vancouver in the late 1700s. Mapping - of space, place and connection - is abundant in these poems, which explore family history, birth and motherhood with extraordinary and tender precision of language. The natural world rises through Johnson's writing, both in real manifestations and as metaphor, and the landscape of the Pacific Northwest forms the backbone of this collection, which is both wonderful and full of wonder. -- Hannah Lowe Kris Johnson offers a mythic sense of the landscape of the Pacific Northwest, fuelled by a complex sense of belonging - and of the feminine dimension of place which lends her work a subtly erotic and immersive quality. The poems encompass both the lyric and the dramatic, and she has an exceptional ear for cadence and timing. While she renews and recalibrates the imaginative world we may glimpse in the work of James Wright, Roethke and Annie Dillard, she is also clearly possessed of an individual vision and song. What most excites me is the unity of thought, feeling and musicality. -- Sean O'BrienMore details
Edition
Paperback original
Language
English
Place of publication
Tyne and Wear
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (UK-trade)
sewn/stitched
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 4 mm
Weight
128 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78037-647-9 (9781780376479)
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
Kris Johnson is from America's Washington state but has lived in the UK since 2007. She received her MA and PhD in Creative Writing from Newcastle University where she has also taught and worked as a researcher. In 2019, she was awarded a Developing Your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England. Her poems have been published in journals and anthologies, including Ambit, Hallelujah for 50ft Women (Bloodaxe Books, 2015), Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Northwest, and Poetry London. Her debut pamphlet, Skinny Dip, was published in 2022 by Enchiridion. Her first book-length collection, Ghost River, is published by Bloodaxe in 2023.
Content
11 Bodies of Water
13 Rainier
14 Lake Americana
15 Yellow Jackets
16 Skinny Dip
17 The Desiccation
19 What I meant when I said goodnight
20 The Doe
22 He Is Risen
23 Nisqually Delta Blue
24 Ghost River
27 Blue
PASSAGE
35 Theoretical Geographers
36 V is for Vancouver
37 The principled process of deduction
38 Church
39 Vancouver, dreaming
40 Pseudotsuga menziesii
41 Kulshan
42 Rainier
43 Having considered with impartiality the excellencies & de?ciencies of the land
44 The burial rituals of the inhabitants
45 In the name of, and for, His Britannic Majesty, His Heirs and successors
46 Your America
47 Passage
48 The death of George Vancouver
49 I dream I am held
50 Indivisible
51 In the Discovery sloop of war
52 George Vancouver, you are not my father
55 Myth
56 We Have Kissed the Four-legged Gods Goodnight
57 Lunar Distances
59 Corona
60 Cottonwood
61 The Time of Lace
62 American Mustard
63 Cast of an Irish Deer
64 None of us is where we ought to be
65 As ash falls on my mother's garden
66 What you hold
67 Tectonics
68 Tahoma
69 Northwest Passage
71 Gather
72 Notes
13 Rainier
14 Lake Americana
15 Yellow Jackets
16 Skinny Dip
17 The Desiccation
19 What I meant when I said goodnight
20 The Doe
22 He Is Risen
23 Nisqually Delta Blue
24 Ghost River
27 Blue
PASSAGE
35 Theoretical Geographers
36 V is for Vancouver
37 The principled process of deduction
38 Church
39 Vancouver, dreaming
40 Pseudotsuga menziesii
41 Kulshan
42 Rainier
43 Having considered with impartiality the excellencies & de?ciencies of the land
44 The burial rituals of the inhabitants
45 In the name of, and for, His Britannic Majesty, His Heirs and successors
46 Your America
47 Passage
48 The death of George Vancouver
49 I dream I am held
50 Indivisible
51 In the Discovery sloop of war
52 George Vancouver, you are not my father
55 Myth
56 We Have Kissed the Four-legged Gods Goodnight
57 Lunar Distances
59 Corona
60 Cottonwood
61 The Time of Lace
62 American Mustard
63 Cast of an Irish Deer
64 None of us is where we ought to be
65 As ash falls on my mother's garden
66 What you hold
67 Tectonics
68 Tahoma
69 Northwest Passage
71 Gather
72 Notes