{"product_id":"bright-travellers","title":"Bright Travellers","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the 2015 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the 2015 Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize for First Full Collection\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eShortlisted for the 2015 T. S. Eliot Prize\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eShortlisted for the 2014 Forward Prize for Best First Collection\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this remarkable, intensely moving, first collection, Fiona Benson shows her fascination with human experience. The poems move on archaeological fast-forward from submerged Devonian forests and a Paleolithic cave-bear skull to the site of decommissioned submarines at HMNB \u003ci\u003eDevonport\u003c\/i\u003e, where the sea is ‘still a torpedo-path, \/ an Armageddon road’. She explores the shared human continuum of bodily longing – from the Prehistoric maker of a wooden fertility fetish, to a modern-day couple wading through summer pollen – and the timeless cycles of conception, birth and child-rearing. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA central sequence of dramatic monologues addressed to Van Gogh allows for a focussed exploration of depression, violence, passion and creativity. In these poems, as in all the poems in this impressive debut, we feel keenly the sense of life lived at the edge of threat – catastrophe, even – but also on the cusp of beauty and happiness. Other poems about the bewildering loss of miscarriage are hard to read and impossible to forget, moving with grace and authority through great grief to arrive at a hard-won destination of selfless, unqualified love.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘I remember again \/ the corridor \/ of the labour ward \/\/ and that woman \/ sitting weeping \/ with her man \/\/ having given birth \/ to a death – \/ small grey face, \/\/ no breath, \/ something you cannot help \/ but love –  \/\/ \u003ci\u003ehabibi, akushla, \u003c\/i\u003e\/\u003ci\u003eI go home alone \u003c\/i\u003e\/ \u003ci\u003ebut carry you, \u003c\/i\u003e\/\/ \u003ci\u003ecourie you, \u003c\/i\u003e\/ \u003ci\u003elittle slipped thing, \u003c\/i\u003e\/ \u003ci\u003eto the ends of the earth\u003c\/i\u003e.’\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MediaPlace","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57314187346302,"sku":"NW9780224099493","price":13.95,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1379\/1261\/files\/9780224099493.jpg?v=1778246844","url":"https:\/\/mediaplace.com\/en-eu\/products\/bright-travellers","provider":"MediaPlace","version":"1.0","type":"link"}