The Honeycomb
Published on 27. April 1989
Book
Paperback/Softback
80 pages
978-1-85224-073-8 (ISBN)
Description
Pauline Stainer's debut collection The Honeycomb was illustrated with drawings by Brian Partridge with a cover painting by Graham Arnold, both Brotherhood of Ruralists artists. It was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. In her Foreword to the book, Anne Stevenson writes that 'the honeycomb of the title furnishes her with a symbolic framework for the entire collection. Her bee poems, in their mature way, are as memorable as Sylvia Plath's, her medical poems more healing and forgiving. She writes sacred poetry for the scienti?c twenty-?rst century'.
Reviews / Votes
Over the past 20 years, Pauline Stainer has all but perfected the art of illumination without demystification, in search of what she calls "the divining shiver", a phrase that can only gesture towards the combination of physical immediacy and numinous wonder that her marvellous poems possess... Stroke by stroke, apprehension by apprehension, Stainer is building a unique and extraordinary body of work. -- Frances Leviston * Guardian * Pauline Stainer's poems are unlike anyone else's, but they're so strong and clear they bring to mind that in-her-own-time ignored, painfully sensitive yet tough-minded American metaphysical Emily Dickinson. Stainer, though, is deeply English and draws from a wealth of sources: medieval lyrics, Eastern as well as Western art, Christian liturgy, and an impressive familiarity with chemistry and optics. But the subjects which engage her are always human, however referentially sacred or scienti?cally demonstrated. The honeycomb of the title furnishes her with a symbolic framework for the entire collection. Her bee poems, in their mature way, are as memorable as Sylvia Plath's, her medical poems more healing and forgiving. She writes sacred poetry for the scienti?c twenty-?rst century. Her poetry preserves a surety of vision, insisting that belief can only increase with knowledge, and that wisdom and faith are still provinces of careful, crystalline language. -- Anne StevensonMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Tyne and Wear
United Kingdom
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 138 mm
Weight
171 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-85224-073-8 (9781852240738)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Pauline Stainer is a freelance writer and tutor. After many years in rural Essex and then on the Orkney island of Rousay, she spent a number of years in rural Suffolk. She now lives near Saffron Walden. Her nine poetry titles, all of which have been published by Bloodaxe Books, include The Lady & the Hare: New & Selected Poems (2003), which draws on five previous books, as well as a new collection, A Litany of High Waters. Her three subsequent collections are Crossing the Snowline (2008), Tiger Facing the Mist (2013) and Sleeping under the Juniper Tree (2017). Along with The Lady & the Hare, her collections The Honeycomb, Sighting the Slave Ship and The Ice-Pilot Speaks were all Poetry Book Society Recommendations. Her fourth collection The Wound-dresser's Dream was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award in 1996. Pauline Stainer received a Cholmondeley Award for her poetry in 2009.