Unexpected Weather by Abi Curtis
Abi Curtis makes the familiar extraordinary, and the supernatural everyday. In poems about animals and clouds, scientists and circus performers, about love and bean-pods, about bruises and myths and the moments before death, her deft use and playful subversions of form give her verse an exquisite poise between gravity and lightness. Unexpected Weather has surprises on every page: sensuous surfaces upturned with a single word, moments frozen and held up for inspection, riddles, mishearings and tricks of the light. The collection is divided into two parts, each of them named for just such a trick: a mirage and a phosphorescence, the one an illusion, seemingly real, the other quite natural, but spectral and eerie. Both create atmospheric effects no less beautiful for their irreality. They are perfect figures for Curtis’s poetry, for her way of conjuring characters, worlds, mythologies and histories out of wisps of experience; but most of all for her delight in metaphor, the medium of condensation and transformation, in which she makes the world limpid, and new.The work delighted me at times, able to capture claustrophobic and breathlessly open experiences, all with a very personal eye, looking at the self in private and social contexts
-- George Ttoouli * Gists and Piths *Curtis never tells you things you already know – she tells you things you are, things you’ve always felt and have never managed to put into words. It’s wondrously satisfying – like being broke then finding a twenty pound note in an old pair of jeans.
-- Luke Kennard * Exultations and Difficulties. *Matching Humbug’s thematic strength is a structured symmetry and clarity of purpose it would be hard to miss.
-- Kate Bingham * Poetry London *
Abi Curtis’s first collection Unexpected Weather was a winner of Salt’s Crashaw Prize in 2008. She received an Eric Gregory Award in 2004 and holds a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Sussex. She is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing at York St John University.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781844715657 |
| ISBN 10 | 1844715655 |
| Title | Unexpected Weather |
| Author | Abi Curtis |
| Series | Salt Modern Poets |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Salt Publishing |
| Year published | 2009-06-08 |
| Number of pages | 80 |
| Prizes | Winner of Crashaw Prize 2008 (UK), Short-listed for London New Poetry Award 2010 (UK) |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |