First Rain in Paradise by Gwyneth Lewis

First Rain in Paradise by Gwyneth Lewis

First Rain in Paradise is a book about falling. Gwyneth Lewiss highly inventive poems trace an interior landscape carved from the trauma of childhood emotional abuse through subsequent chronic ill health and towards a hard-won resurrection. This work refuses to keep pain a secret. Shame is a lurking presence, but suffering doesn't preclude humour.

The bracing latest collection from Welsh poet Lewis traces an arc from the trauma of maternal abuse…through aftershocks of chronic illness, self-harm, and shame…to recovery ('I am found')Her lines both stun and revive, moving between Plathian imagery… and disarming candor ('Underneath, I’m a bit of a sweetie'). The collection radiates hard-won self-possession… Readers will enjoy discovering this writer of extraordinary gifts. * Publishers Weekly, starred review of First Rain in Paradise *
True stars in poetry like Gwyneth Lewis always match brilliance with warmth. She is the one to bet on. -- Les Murray
Such exuberant invention… The range of reference is so wide, we are intoxicated by it. -- Elaine Feinstein * Independent *
One of the most exhilaratingly gifted poets of her generation. -- M. Wynn Thomas * Guardian *

Gwyneth Lewis was Wales’s National Poet from 2005 to 2006, the first writer to be given the Welsh laureateship. Her first six books of poetry in Welsh and English were followed by Chaotic Angels (2005) from Bloodaxe, which brings together the poems from her English collections, Parables & Faxes, Zero Gravity and Keeping Mum, and by A Hospital Odyssey (2010), and Sparrow Tree (2011), winner of the Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Wales Book of the Year) in 2012. Her sixth collection in English, First Rain in Paradise, is published by Bloodaxe in 2025. Her other books include Sunbathing in the Rain: A Cheerful Book about Depression (Flamingo, 2002), Two in a Boat: A Marital Voyage (Fourth Estate, 2005), The Meat Tree: new stories from the Mabinogion (Seren, 2010), Nightshade Mother: A Disentangling (University of Wales Press, 2024) and The Poetry Detective: Writing and Reading Poetry Through Fear (Princeton University Press, 2025). With Rowan Williams she translated The Book of Taliesin (2019) for Penguin Classics. Her Welsh collection, Y Llofrudd Iaith (Barddas, 2000), won the Welsh Arts Council Book of the Year Prize, and her English collection, Keeping Mum was shortlisted for the same prize. Both Zero Gravity and Keeping Mum were Poetry Book Society Recommendations. Gwyneth Lewis composed the words on the front of the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff, opened in 2004. In 2014 she dramatised her book-length poem A Hospital Odyssey for the BBC, broadcast on Radio 4's Afternoon Drama, and delivered her Newcastle/Bloodaxe Poetry Lectures, published in Quantum Poetics (Bloodaxe Books, 2015). She lives in Cardiff, and teaches at Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English in Vermont. She has been Artist in Residence in 2023 and 2024 at Balliol College, Oxford, where she did her doctorate in 1985 and is an Honorary Fellow. She received a Cholmondeley Award in 2010 for a distinguished body of writing, and in 2022 she received an MBE for her services to literature and mental health.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781780377339
ISBN 10	1780377339
Title	First Rain in Paradise
Author	Gwyneth Lewis
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Year published	2025-03-27
Number of pages	80
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.