New Light for the Old Dark

Author: Sam Willetts
Publisher: Yellow Jersey Press
Category: Biography: Historical, Political & Military, Poetry By Individual Poets
Book Format: Paperback

The poems in this remarkable first collection have been hard won- 'Fruits of much grief they are,' as Donne said, 'emblems of more.' Having lost ten years to heroin addiction and recovery, Sam Willetts emerges now - suddenly, and apparently from nowhere - as a fully-fledged and significant English poet.In a book deeply conscious of history, one series of poems tracks his mother's escape, as a young girl, from the Nazis, in a narrative that moves from a Stuka attack on the Smolensk Road to the Krakow ghetto, the destruction of Warsaw, to Nuremberg and Nagasaki and, finally, his mother's grave. Other poems address Englishness, secular Jewishness, and the childhood pleasures of Oxfordshire - an increasingly deceptive pastoral, stalked and eventually shattered by heroin, which brings a grim new existence among dealers and users. The redemption the poet finds, through detox and rehab, love and writing, is full of regret for the years and lives wasted, but also offers a lyrical rebirth of the senses- 'In a new light, a new moon/ that isn't made of scorched tinfoil/will turn your tide again'.Deft, economical and wonderfully original, this is work that celebrates the peaks and troughs of a lived life, the poems' vivid clarity feeling both fresh and fully earned. It is rare to find an unknown poet of such mature quality, and New Light for the Old Dark represents a brilliant dawning.

About Sam Willetts
Sam Willetts was born in 1962 and has spent most of his life in Oxford, where he read English at Wadham College, and in London. He has worked as a teacher, journalist and travel writer.

(BK-9780224089180)

SKU BK-9780224089180
Barcode # 9780224089180
Brand Yellow Jersey Press
Artist / Author Sam Willetts
Shipping Weight 0.1000kg
Shipping Width 0.130m
Shipping Height 0.050m
Shipping Length 0.197m
Assembled Length 19.700m
Assembled Height 50.000m
Assembled Width 13.000m
Type Paperback

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