- Paperback: 80 pages
- Publisher: Faber And Faber Ltd. (Oct 28 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 057121780X
- ISBN-13: 978-0571217809
- Product Dimensions: 20 x 13.4 x 1.4 cm
- Shipping Weight: 200 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,863,765 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Product Description
"Minsk" is Lavinia Greenlaw's third collection, and the first since the title poem of "A World Where News Travelled Slowly" won the Forward Prize for the year's finest poem of 1997. From London Zoo to an Essex village and the Arctic Circle, Greenlaw explores questions of place - the childhood landscapes we leave behind, those we travel towards, and those like 'Minsk' which we believe to be missing from our lives. Greenlaw's restless, inquisitive tone builds to make "Minsk" a hypnotic collection from one of the leading poets of her generation.
About the Author
Lavinia Greenlaw was born in London where she has lived for most of her life. She studied seventeenth-century art at the Courtauld Institute, and was awarded a NESTA fellowship to pursue her interest in vision, travel and perception. Her poetry includes Minsk, which was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot, Forward and Whitbread Poetry Prizes. She has also published novels and works of non-fiction which include The Importance of Music to Girls and Questions of Travel: William Morris in Iceland. She has won a number of prizes and held residencies at the Science Museum and the Royal Society of Medicine. Her work for BBC radio includes programmes about the Arctic, the Baltic, Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Bishop.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sleek and uncompromising, April 8 2005
By Luan Gaines "luansos" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Minsk (Paperback)
Austere does not necessarily imply cool or aloof, but rather a refined sensibility for the elementary, the unadorned, to see more in less, to perceive truths with clarity. While prior works have been clean, almost scientific, Minsk, while exuding the chill of winter, is nevertheless a vehicle for fantasy, a dreamscape of an imagined land.In a thoughtful forward, Edward Hirsh discusses the direction of Greenlaw's poetry, her fascination with issues of time and space, but with secret electricity, a current of morality. He states that Greenlaw is a winter writer and her icy landscapes explore questions of place.
Looking back, the past is examined, the bright promise of youth:
"Did we not remember the curse of this place?
How Sundays drank our blood as we watched
dry paint or the dust on the television screen." (Zombies)
Intoxicated by the newness of the world, it is possible to believe in beginnings and ignore reality:
"How people died bursting out of a quiet life,
or from being written into a small world's stories." (Ibid.)
The poet's impressions allow us to reflect, to root around in memories sparked by a phrase, an image. Like art, good poetry is visual and Greenlaw's deft touch challenges form, stating bluntly that this is poetry, these are the words meant to be, in columns or sideways, pulled from the past or fresh as this morning. History and myth loom large, images of a lifetime ago, when stories passed by word of mouth, in rhyme, in song. Complex and stunning, Greenlaw has stepped further out on the ice-encrusted pond, daring it to hold:
"They fold their robes, test each rung,
half-enter a pool pinched in three feet of ice.
Each swims a neat circle, wearing slippers and gloves." (Steam)
Minsk harkens the experience of untested territory, watching, measuring, feeling the cool fingers of winter, a creature walking the lands of myth:
"All the small bones of feet and hands.
What god is this we travel for hours,
getting no further than the tips of his fingers?" (Vaeroy)
Luan Gaines/2005.
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