We Were Pedestrians by Gerard Woodward
In a return to poetry after his two highly acclaimed novels, August and I'll Go To Bed At Noon, Gerard Woodward has written a wonderfully inventive, witty and moving collection of poetry about the way we try to domesticate the world. In poems full of rooms and houses, where wily nature eludes the instinct to tame, Woodward combines the observing eye of an anthropologist with an exuberant, daring and endlessly playful imagination. There are houses of memory and houses of the future, houses that stand empty and houses crammed with the accumulations of life. From the clothes that house our bodies to the atmosphere that clothes our universe, from the flush of a toilet to the colonisation of Mars, Woodward is always looking at juxtapositions of the unruly and the controlled. Perhaps it is no accident that several of the poems are about coastal places or climate change. The ceaseless erosion of nature is an image of the impossibility of capture, with language the last barrier against decay and disappearance. In 'Norfolk', the pebbles on the beach, the pennies in a slot machine and his young son's wobbly tooth concatenate with enormous pathos as we watch the boy's realisation that life's events do not match his desire. The intimacy and emotion of this and other poems is a new development in Woodward's poetry and makes We Were Pedestrians his finest collection yet.
A marvellous writer: crisp but supple, dense but relaxed * Daily Telegraph *
The poet and novelist Gerard Woodward was born in London in 1961 and is Lecturer in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. He has been awarded the Somerset Maugham Award and the Eric Gregory Award for his poetry. Meanwhile, his first novel, August, was shortlisted for the 2001 Whitbread First Novel Award and I'll Go to Bed at Noon was a finalist in the 2004 Man Booker Prize. This is his fourth collection of poetry.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780701178871 |
| ISBN 10 | 0701178876 |
| Title | We Were Pedestrians |
| Author | Gerard Woodward |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Vintage Publishing |
| Year published | 2005-07-07 |
| Number of pages | 80 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |