Jean Sprackland

A vital and vivid poetry collection about place, time, illness and recovery'This is a profound, enduring collection' Guardian, Best New PoetryEach of the three sections in Goyle, Chert, Mire focuses on one of the distinctive elements characteristic of the Blackdown Hills – a little-known, sparsely populated area straddling the border between Somerset and Devon – and in particular the remote springline valley where the author lives. In this unique landscape, relatively unchanged over the centuries, the past is so evident that it can come to seem indistinguishable from the present. Illness causes a similar slippage in an individual’s sense of time. The poems trace an overlapping narrative of meningitis and the cognitive symptoms – at once distorting and revelatory – that came in its aftermath. In company with Geoffrey Hill, Ted Hughes and Pauline Stainer, Goyle, Chert, Mire employs a tough lyricism and taut line to scrutinise the natural world through historical and personal lenses. Alert to texture and temperature, humanity and history, time passing and time standing still, these poems are a deep examination of landscape, body and mind. 'Jean Sprackland’s poems are an uncommon pleasure to read' Observer‘Accessible but worth close reading, she is among the best of her generation’ Herald'She reinvents experience for us, while putting us in closer touch with it' George Szirtes

'Elegant and deeply sensory' Katherine May, author of WinteringAn exhilarating leap into darkness in all its forms, enchantments and history: the new work of non-fiction from award-winning poet and writer Jean SpracklandDarkness can make the most ordinary activity feel adventurous. Open a door and step through it. You can’t see a thing: you could be anywhere. Step over the threshold, into the dark, and feel your way. We humans have a complicated relationship with the dark. We fear it, and make great efforts to blot it out. But we also long for it, especially if we live in cities, or remember the starry skies of our childhoods. Darkness opens us up to risk, delight and transformation. Is it possible to prise it free of its negative associations, which are as old as human thought itsel? n her quest for a new, more intimate relationship with darkness, acclaimed poet and writer Jean Sprackland finds herself confronting some of the deepest – and darkest – questions about who we are and our place in the world. Drawing on memory and imagination, history and ecology, literature and myth, Night Vision is an expansive, thrilling journey into the true dark.