Ground Water by Matthew Hollis
In this sparkling debut, Matthew Hollis immerses us in the undercurrents of our lives. Love and loss are buoyed by a house full of milk, an orchard underwater, the laws of walking on water. Rainwater, floodwater, flux – the liquid landscapes which shift relentlessly in Ground Water – threaten and comfort by turns. Matthew Hollis's poems are brimming with courage in adversity as well as the promise of renewal, culminating in a powerful sequence about a father's struggle with terminal illness. Matthew Hollis’s first collection Ground Water was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, Whitbread Poetry Award and Forward Prize for Best First Collection. His second collection, Earth House, followed in 2023.
An impressive debut…the metaphorical language is finely judged, touching both the landscapes and the people crawling its surface with a shrewd but never less than sympathetic gaze-- D.J.Taylor * Guardian *
Matthew Hollis shows an impressive confidence in the promptings of the imagination and no desire at all to ingratiate himself. Craft, not attitude, is what counts. Poems are sometimes called “quiet” when really they’re inaudible. His are genuinely quiet, drawing in the ear to enjoy, for example, his artful rendering in slowed folk-song rhythm of the terror and excitement of floods. -- Sean O'Brien * Sunday Times *
Matthew Hollis shows an impressive confidence in the promptings of the imagination and no desire at all to ingratiate himself. Craft, not attitude, is what counts. Poems are sometimes called “quiet” when really they’re inaudible. His are genuinely quiet, drawing in the ear to enjoy, for example, his artful rendering in slowed folk-song rhythm of the terror and excitement of floods. -- Sean O'Brien * Sunday Times *
Matthew Hollis was born in Norwich in 1971, and now lives in London. His debut Ground Water (Bloodaxe Books, 2004) was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, the Whitbread Poetry Award and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection; it was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. He is co-editor of Strong Words: Modern Poets on Modern Poetry (Bloodaxe Books, 2000) and 101 Poems Against War (Faber & Faber, 2003), and editor of Selected Poems of Edward Thomas (Faber & Faber, 2011). Now All Roads Lead to France: the Last Years of Edward Thomas (Faber & Faber, UK, 2011; Norton, US, 2012) won the Costa Biography Award and the H. W. Fisher Biography Prize, was Radio 4 Book of the Week and Sunday Times Biography of the Year. He has published the handmade and letterpress pamphlets Stones (Incline Press, 2016), East (Clutag Press, 2016), Leaves (Hazel Press, 2020) and Havener (Bonnefant Press, 2022). Leaves was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Poetry Award 2021. He is the author of The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem (Faber & Faber, UK, Norton, US, 2022). He was Poetry Editor at Faber & Faber from 2012 to 2023. His second book-length collection, Earth House, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2023 and was longlisted for The Laurel Prize 2023.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781852246570 |
| ISBN 10 | 185224657X |
| Title | Ground Water |
| Author | Matthew Hollis |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Bloodaxe Books Ltd |
| Year published | 2004-01-29 |
| Number of pages | 64 |
| Prizes | Short-listed for Guardian First Book Award 2004 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |