Crib
Published on 9. November 2014
Book
Paperback/Softback
63 pages
978-1-907587-80-1 (ISBN)
Description
crib draws on the 111 poems Mario Petrucci composed for his newborn son, a series completed on his first birthday. Tender though never sentimental, inventive yet anchored in physical and psycho- logical reality, this many-sided poetry records a father's profound attentiveness to his boy, refracted through the poet's radical devotion to language. In its fascination with infant consciousness, crib adds a distinctive strand to Petrucci's immense i tulips sequence. Bringing wakefulness and sleep to archetypal pitch, these lines extend paternity into fresh dimensions that encompass ecology, geology and cosmology until, with Walt Whitman, we witness how 'the grass is itself a child'.
Reviews / Votes
'This poetry is a kind of night-fishing, poem after poem casting out its thin line of sound and image, reeling in a sudden arresting idea or touch of subtle beauty. With rich vocabulary and melting syntax, crib trusts to the slippage from sensation to thought and association, back to sense. The poems stretch linguistic awareness and challenge easy resolutions, but are never an arid exercise, rooted as they are in that deepest and most physical human experience - the bond between parent and child.' PHILIP GROSSMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 135 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-907587-80-1 (9781907587801)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Ecologist, PhD physicist and Royal Literary Fund Fellow Mario Petrucci is a multi-award-winning poet and residency frontiersman, the only poet to have been resident at the Imperial War Museum and with BBC Radio 3. Mario is four times winner of the London Writers competition, has won prizes in the National Poetry Competition, and is recipient of a PBS Recommendation, the Bridport Prize, an Arts Council England Writers' Award and a New London Writers Award. His Arvon-winning collection Heavy Water: a poem for Chernobyl, below, was the basis of a film by Seventh Art Productions. Aspiring to reach 1111 poems in the vast 'i tulips' project, "Petrucci's tulips promise to grow into a truly ambitious landmark body of work" (Poetry Book Society Bulletin).