Sarajevo Roses
Published on 28. September 2017
Book
Paperback/Softback
64 pages
978-1-78410-408-5 (ISBN)
Description
Shortlisted for the 2019 Ledbury Forte Poetry Prize for Second Collections
Sarajevo Roses is Rory Waterman's second collection of poems. From the start we are in the company of a poet on the move. On sleeper trains, in cars and on foot, Waterman takes us into Mediterranean Europe, to Palma's Bellver Castle, to Venice, to Kruje, to the Italian ghost-town Craco, and to St Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, where 'selfie-sticks dance before us at the altar'. Sarajevo's 'neatened muddle of terracotta and concrete' is twinned with the 'church spires and rain-bright roofs' of the poet's former hometown, Lincoln.
The Sarajevo rose of the book's title - a mortar crater filled with red resin, in remembrance - is less an overarching symbol here than one example of the past inscribed upon the present - culturally in our architecture, individually on our bodies - and of the instinct to preserve wounds as a mark of respect, or warning. Surrounded by the war-shaped, memorial landscapes of Europe, the poet is faced by those smaller wars and memorials one carries within, marks left by lovers, friends, relations, and past selves.
Sarajevo Roses is Rory Waterman's second collection of poems. From the start we are in the company of a poet on the move. On sleeper trains, in cars and on foot, Waterman takes us into Mediterranean Europe, to Palma's Bellver Castle, to Venice, to Kruje, to the Italian ghost-town Craco, and to St Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, where 'selfie-sticks dance before us at the altar'. Sarajevo's 'neatened muddle of terracotta and concrete' is twinned with the 'church spires and rain-bright roofs' of the poet's former hometown, Lincoln.
The Sarajevo rose of the book's title - a mortar crater filled with red resin, in remembrance - is less an overarching symbol here than one example of the past inscribed upon the present - culturally in our architecture, individually on our bodies - and of the instinct to preserve wounds as a mark of respect, or warning. Surrounded by the war-shaped, memorial landscapes of Europe, the poet is faced by those smaller wars and memorials one carries within, marks left by lovers, friends, relations, and past selves.
Reviews / Votes
'In this book, personal, emotional wounds are memorialised... the poems are the red roses that these moments become, marking a distance between selves, acknowledging them as landmarks in a psychological landscape.'Vicki Husband, The Compass 'The world is a slightly better place for the existence of this book. I do not write that lightly.'
Peter Pegnall, Ploughshares 'The collection is marked by a sense that the world is indifferent to us, both as species and individuals, that time is slippery and fast-moving...For all his often regular metrics and traditional craft, these are not conservative poems... It's a consistently 'political' book.'
Declan Ryan, Poetry London 'Waterman is a fine craftsman and this is a thing most needful in the collection's journeyings through 'industrial dereliction' and the painful re-calibrations of a 'post empire' experience. Re-imaginings of spaces for leisure are met by a poet who is at home with formal variations, rhyme and meter.'
Peter Carpenter, Under the Radar 'Waterman's work extends out and beyond any dangerously neat equations or notions of 'home' and 'self'; with him, it is in the settings of Europe's past and future. The reader visits Iceland, Palma's Bellver Castle, Venice, Kruj,, the Italian ghost-town Craco, St Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, and in all the travellings we become more and more aware of the precarious fragility of human 'settlements' in all senses.'
Peter Carpenter, Under The Radar 'a volume that balances both wit and wisdom'
Kate Noakes, the North 'Very few poets can bring to the lives of others the same devout attention we tend to bestow upon ourselves: Rory Waterman is just such a poet. Whether their site of meditation is an abandoned colliery or a much-marketed urban vista, the exquisite lyrics of Sarajevo Roses are imbued with mindfulness. Suppleness of poetic line matches suppleness of spirit.'
Judges, Ledbury Forte Poetry Prize for Second Collection
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Carcanet Press Ltd
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 136 mm
Thickness: 10 mm
Weight
107 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78410-408-5 (9781784104085)
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
Rory Waterman was born in Belfast in 1981, grew up mainly in Lincolnshire, and lives in Nottingham. His previous full-length collections, all published by Carcanet, are: Tonight the Summer's Over (2013), which was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for a Seamus Heaney Award; Sarajevo Roses (2017), which was shortlisted for the Ledbury Forte Prize for Second Collections; Sweet Nothings (2020) and and Come Here to This Gate (2024), described in the Guardian as 'a wise and deeply satisfying book'.. He is also a press critic, and has published several books on modern and contemporary poetry. He is Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature at Nottingham Trent University. Author photo by Thomas Curtis.