Flood
Published on 21. June 2018
Book
Paperback/Softback
80 pages
978-1-78037-420-8 (ISBN)
Description
The territory of Clare Shaw's third collection isn't one she chose herself, but one which chose her: the flooded valley and the ruined home. The 2015 floods in Britain left whole swathes of the country submerged, including her home town. Flood offers an eye-witness account of those events, from rainfall to rescue, but ripples out from there. Intimately interwoven with the breakdown of a relationship, flooding serves as a powerful metaphor for wider experiences of loss, destruction and recovery. Testifying equally to the forces that destroy us and save us, flood runs through the book in different forms - bereavement and trauma, the Savile scandal, life in an asylum. Yet ultimately, this is a story of one life as it is unravelled and rebuilt, written from the heart and from the North, in a language as dangerous and sustaining as water.
Reviews / Votes
Caught directly in the deluge's rising tide, Shaw is a witness who gives incantatory evidence of poetry's power to define, rather than simply describe, the existential pain of being caught helpless in maelstroms both external and psychological. -- Steve Whitaker * Yorkshire Times *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Tyne and Wear
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 137 mm
Thickness: 6 mm
Weight
118 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78037-420-8 (9781780374208)
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
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Clare Shaw was born in Burnley in 1972. Their first two collections with Bloodaxe were Straight Ahead (2006), which attracted a Forward Prize Highly Commended for Best Single Poem, and Head On (2012), which according to the Times Literary Supplement is 'fierce, memorable and visceral'. Their later collections are Flood (2018), a New Writing North Read Regional title in 2019, and Towards a General Theory of Love (2022) which won a Northern Writers' Award and was a Poetry Society Book of the Year.
Their poetry is widely anthologised - including 100 Queer Poems (Penguin Random House, 2022) and the National Trust's Nature Poems (2023). It is also set to music, illustrated and staged, and has featured multiple times on Radio 4's Poetry Please and Radio 3's The Verb. In 2021, Clare wrote the libretto for the community opera Daylighting, which premiered at the Royal Academy of Music and was shortlisted for an Ivor Novello Award for Community and Engagement. They have also written for theatre and radio, and as a mental health educator and trainer, they have published numerous resources in the field of mental health. Clare lives on the hills above Hebden Bridge and in 2022, co-wrote and presented Radio Four's Weathering the Storm which explored the relationship between art, resilience and the landscape of the Calder Valley.
A passionate advocate for accessibility in poetry, and for poetry as a tool of personal and social change, Clare has founded or directed numerous poetry initiatives including the Kendal Poetry Festival, Wonky Animals, the Lost Things Project and more. They have held poetry residences in numerous settings, including festivals, conferences, hospitals, factories, landfill sites and bogs; and they collaborate with artists and academics in other disciplines, including photography, folk music, film, conservation and design. Clare lectures at the University of Huddersfield and is a regular tutor for Wordsworth Grasmere, The Royal Literary Fund and The Arvon Foundation. Variously described as 'electrifying' and as 'one of the best readers on the scene', Clare performs across the UK and beyond.
Their poetry is widely anthologised - including 100 Queer Poems (Penguin Random House, 2022) and the National Trust's Nature Poems (2023). It is also set to music, illustrated and staged, and has featured multiple times on Radio 4's Poetry Please and Radio 3's The Verb. In 2021, Clare wrote the libretto for the community opera Daylighting, which premiered at the Royal Academy of Music and was shortlisted for an Ivor Novello Award for Community and Engagement. They have also written for theatre and radio, and as a mental health educator and trainer, they have published numerous resources in the field of mental health. Clare lives on the hills above Hebden Bridge and in 2022, co-wrote and presented Radio Four's Weathering the Storm which explored the relationship between art, resilience and the landscape of the Calder Valley.
A passionate advocate for accessibility in poetry, and for poetry as a tool of personal and social change, Clare has founded or directed numerous poetry initiatives including the Kendal Poetry Festival, Wonky Animals, the Lost Things Project and more. They have held poetry residences in numerous settings, including festivals, conferences, hospitals, factories, landfill sites and bogs; and they collaborate with artists and academics in other disciplines, including photography, folk music, film, conservation and design. Clare lectures at the University of Huddersfield and is a regular tutor for Wordsworth Grasmere, The Royal Literary Fund and The Arvon Foundation. Variously described as 'electrifying' and as 'one of the best readers on the scene', Clare performs across the UK and beyond.