Spills
Published on 25. February 2016
Book
Paperback/Softback
184 pages
978-1-84777-225-1 (ISBN)
Description
In Spills Angela Leighton combines poetry, memoir, libretto, short story, prose-poetry and translation, slipping between genres while hearing the conversations between them. 'You start from who you are, and walk and walk', she writes, in the spirit of free-voyaging that defines this collection. The prose tells, semi-fictionally, of the poet's life as the daughter of a composer-father and Italian mother, a life split between languages and places, north and south, often among curious and memorable characters. The poems address related themes of place and language, war and peace, the landscape of southern Italy and the Christian story of the Passion. The conversations between different forms and motifs are a result of Leighton's approach to writing almost as a strain of musical composition. The writing is often about music, but it is also a search for music in writing. The collection closes with a significant new body of translations and adaptations of the Sicilian poet Leonardo Sciascia, Spills's luminous other voice, 'seeking its own heart of music'
Reviews / Votes
'Leighton's language is surprisingly meaty. This is attentive, sure-footed poetry.'The Guardian 'An original poet who may come to be an important one.'
The Times 'The density of Angela Leighton's poetry is of the best kind.'
The TLS 'Angela Leighton's genre-defying book -- poetry, memoir, experiment in translation in its many and often surprising senses -- explores with beautiful precision what she calls the 'two-ply tongue', a suggestive metaphor for the way we speak and think and write.'
Patrick McGuinness 'Outstanding among the excellent ... the poems ring like bells.'
Anne Stevenson 'This is one of those rare books that you know will become a kind of touchstone.'
Jay Parini
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Carcanet Press Ltd
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 213 mm
Width: 132 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
249 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-84777-225-1 (9781847772251)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Angela Leighton was born in Wakefield, educated in Edinburgh and Oxford, and has taught at the universities of Hull and Cambridge. The daughter of a Yorkshire (composer) father and a Neapolitan mother, she has always recognised her heritage of mixed languages and conflicting standpoints. Perhaps for this reason her work has always pushed at the boundaries of literary form. Her most recent critical work, Hearing Things: The Work of Sound in Literature (2018), sets autobiographical creative prose alongside critical writing to suggest the connections between them, while her volume of poems, Spills (2016), interweaves memoir, short story and translation with original poetry. The permeable flow of the language, towards music on the one hand and other literatures on the other, lies at the heart of her own writing.
She has published poetry and short stories in many magazines, including the New Yorker, TLS, Poetry Chicago, Archipelago, The Dark Horse, and others. Something, I Forget is her sixth volume of poetry.
She has published poetry and short stories in many magazines, including the New Yorker, TLS, Poetry Chicago, Archipelago, The Dark Horse, and others. Something, I Forget is her sixth volume of poetry.