The Met Office Advises Caution
Published on 29. September 2016
Book
Paperback/Softback
72 pages
978-1-78410-272-2 (ISBN)
Description
Shortlisted for The Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry First Collection Prize 2017
Commendation for The Met Office Advises Caution: Poetry Book Society Recommendation
Financial Times Best Books of 2016
GuardianBest Books of 2016
The Poetry School Books of the Year 2016
Rebecca Watts's debut collection is a witty, warm-hearted guide to the English landscape, and a fresh take on nature poetry. In assured style, Watts positions herself where Wordsworth, Frost and Hughes have stood; with an original point of view and an openness to the possibilities of form, she retunes the genre for modern ears.
From the wide-open plains of ecology and social history to the intimate enclosures of dreams, homes and bodies, these poems approach their often-unusual subjects with the clarity and matter-of-factness of Simon Armitage and with humour that recalls Stevie Smith, spinning memorable scenes and vivid images from the material of ordinary language.
Animals, as familiars and omens, abound. Weather anticipates and directs human drama, under the analytic and tender watch of a poet influenced as much by science and realism as by Romanticism. As landscaper, orienteer and companion, Watts finds new ways of negotiating the complex territories of our physical and emotional worlds.
Commendation for The Met Office Advises Caution: Poetry Book Society Recommendation
Financial Times Best Books of 2016
GuardianBest Books of 2016
The Poetry School Books of the Year 2016
Rebecca Watts's debut collection is a witty, warm-hearted guide to the English landscape, and a fresh take on nature poetry. In assured style, Watts positions herself where Wordsworth, Frost and Hughes have stood; with an original point of view and an openness to the possibilities of form, she retunes the genre for modern ears.
From the wide-open plains of ecology and social history to the intimate enclosures of dreams, homes and bodies, these poems approach their often-unusual subjects with the clarity and matter-of-factness of Simon Armitage and with humour that recalls Stevie Smith, spinning memorable scenes and vivid images from the material of ordinary language.
Animals, as familiars and omens, abound. Weather anticipates and directs human drama, under the analytic and tender watch of a poet influenced as much by science and realism as by Romanticism. As landscaper, orienteer and companion, Watts finds new ways of negotiating the complex territories of our physical and emotional worlds.
Reviews / Votes
'Humour, philosophy, feminism and the natural world might not necessarily make for comfortable poetry bedfellows, but [Watts] has them fitting together perfectly. The contents of wheelie bins, Zen trees, a suffragette audaciously mounting a penny farthing bicycle, athletic tracks and the fate of country moles - the poems offer levity and depth, always revealing a ''clear hard road, made for going along''.'Sarah Hall, Guardian Best Books of 2016 'Rebecca Watts's poems adopt strange and illuminating vantage points - the bird's-eye view of a hawk, or a Victorian lady surveying a street from a penny-farthing - to do poetry's work of telling the truth, but telling it slant. Watts is particularly attuned to those points where human and non-human creatures meet and interact, and writes with intelligence and incision.'
Emma Jones 'Well edited, deceptively simple, quietly shrewd. A truly lovely group of articulate, intelligible, clean, clear-sighted poems, which despite their unassuming exteriors, belie the scuttle of enigmatic presences beneath.'
Will Barrett, The Poetry School Books of the Year 2016 'The Met Office Advises Caution is, without doubt, a deft take on nature poetry, but we would be remiss to read it simply as that. Watts has not only begun reworking the tradition for the present era, but has also started to fill it with a life and range that helps us make new sense of the past.'
The London Magazine 'The title poem gently alerts us to the shared vulnerability of man, creature and environment. Brief encounters and deep connections with animals are perceptively drawn, while the weaker links between people are pinpointed with needle-sharp satire.'
Financial Times Best Books of 2016
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Carcanet Press Ltd
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 135 mm
Thickness: 6 mm
Weight
106 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78410-272-2 (9781784102722)
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
Rebecca Watts
The Met Office Advises Caution
E-Book
08/2016
Carcanet Poetry
€9.59
Available for download
Person
Rebecca Watts was born in Suffolk in 1983 and currently lives in Cambridge, where she works in a library and as a freelance writer, editor and tutor. In 2015 a selection of her poetry featured in Carcanet's New Poetries VI anthology. Her debut collection The Met Office Advises Caution (2016) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the 2017 Seamus Heaney Centre Prize. Her second collection, Red Gloves, was published in 2020 and won a Gladstone's Library Writers-in-Residence Award. Rebecca has received fellowships and awards from the Hawthornden Foundation, the Royal Literary Fund, the Rolex Mentor and Protege Arts Initiative, the Society of Authors and Arts Council England. The Face in the Well (2025) is her latest collection.