Coleshill, Fiona Sampson
Coleshill, Fiona Sampson
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Coleshill

Author: Fiona Sampson

Narrator: Fiona Sampson

Unabridged: 1 hr 34 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/23/2013

Synopsis

Deep in limestone country, at the corner of Wiltshire, Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire, lies the village of Coleshill.

This haunting new collection from Fiona Sampson is a portrait of place, both real and imaginary; a dreamscape with its roots deep in the local soil.

The poems hum with an evocative music of their own: there are hymns of the orchards, verses for walkers, songs for bees. These are slices of life and states of mind; poems of grief, fears and maledictions, but also of renewal, resurrections and the promise of spring.

Coleshill emerges as a “parish of sun / and shade”; its darkness and light perfectly balanced. From the T.S. Eliot and Forward Prize shortlisted poet comes a deep, interrogative collection of astonishing clarity and power.

About Fiona Sampson

Fiona Sampson is the author of twenty-eight books of poetry and nonfiction, including the critically acclaimed In Search of Mary Shelley. Published in thirty-seven languages, she's the recipient of numerous national and international honors, including an MBE for services to literature. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Wordsworth Trust, and English Association, she is professor emerita of the University of Roehampton and lives on the Welsh borders.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Ben on May 31, 2015

Coleshill Fiona Sampson (Author) In her new collection, the critically acclaimed poet Fiona Sampson has used her undeniable gift for language to produce poetry that is by turns fragile, beautiful, worldly, strong, delicate, ethereal, and at all times completely rooted in real life and real places as w......more

Goodreads review by Ophelia on September 23, 2020

This collection felt like it meant a lot to Fiona Sampson but she put little effort into sharing those feelings with the reader. As vague and disconnected from itself as the last time I read it, but I did still enjoy ‘THE CHANGES’.......more

Goodreads review by Sarah on June 06, 2013

Haunting in the best, truest sense. Mesmeric language; refined atmosphere. For me, her best collection......more

Quotes

Coleshill finds Fiona Sampson enduring a term of trial, its rural setting made menacing by present threat, old terrors and the larger unravelling of the environment Independent

In this sumptuous collection, haunted by fear and a surefooted, hard-won joy, Fiona Sampson celebrates that elusive and most endangered thing: a meaningful sense of place. Reading Coleshill, we are reminded of an essential community with the land, and with all our good neighbours, animals and humans

These poems of place, often troublingly dark, are sui generis in the way they use what's to hand to explore what's hidden. Fiona Sampson's technical subtlety is everywhere in evidence and her emotional range is startling. Coleshill is a book of rare power and depth.

This is Sampson's poetic masterpiece, and a landmark book. She creates intimacy of place through a chamber music of the natural and made worlds, honed observations and epiphanic ‘instrusions’. With its layering of history and presence, Coleshill is a major contribution to the literature of the local.

A richly rewarding and thematically coherent work, written with an avid attention to light effects, atmosphere, and the natural world. Independent on Sunday

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