Wooroloo by Frieda Hughes
Frieda Hughes's first collection of poems extends the distinctive imaginative territory of her paintings and children's books. In the fairytale world of Wooroloo, light defines dark while dark extends its shadows into the brightest of lives. Fire is the dominant element of these poems: as in her recent paintings, created phoenix-like from the bushfire which destroyed her studio in Wooroloo, her once paradisal home in Australia. Her fables cast light on two worlds, giving a mythic dimension to a contemporary world of husbands and wives, hospital patients and social outcasts, at the same time as they depict with an artist's keen eye the particular nature of beast, fish and fowl. Strange creatures and fabled beings come to life in her poems, so that birds and birdmen, fathers and family, the dying and the dead, swarm through the psyche like flames in a burning forest. The self she depicts is tested by loss, danger, fear and abandonment, yet transformed through experience into a world beyond nihilism and despair: a place which makes possible truth, strength, hope and the redemptive powers of love. Though a writer of unusual literary pedigree, she is first and foremost an original voice, with her own compelling stories to tell. Poetry Book Society Special Commendation.
Her book is about aloneness, about cathartic confrontation and rebirth..The position of the confessional voice in this poetry is quite deceptive - the I can be both public and personal. Such poems outflank the obvious. This is poetry come out of siege. -- John Kinsella * Observer *
An accomplished painter, she brings to her poetry the same landscape of contrasts, in her vivid descriptions of light and dark, struggle and release, the cleansing properties of fire. She is a courageous poet with a rich palette. -- Maura Dooley & Jamie McKendrick * PBS Bulletin *
An accomplished painter, she brings to her poetry the same landscape of contrasts, in her vivid descriptions of light and dark, struggle and release, the cleansing properties of fire. She is a courageous poet with a rich palette. -- Maura Dooley & Jamie McKendrick * PBS Bulletin *
Frieda Hughes was born in London in 1960, grew up in Devon, and after living in various parts of England and Australia now lives on the Welsh Borders. She wrote and painted from an early age, and for many years has been a painter and children's writer. She received a NESTA Award in 2002 to help her work on Forty-five, her portrait of her life in 45 poems and paintings, the poems from which were published by HarperCollins in the US in 2006. Her most recent work is included is Alternative Values: poems & paintings, launched by Bloodaxe in 2015 at an exhibition of the paintings at London's October Gallery. Out of the Ashes (2018), draws on her four previous poetry collections from Bloodaxe: Wooroloo (1999), Stonepicker (2001), Waxworks (2002) and The Book of Mirrors (2009). Her first children's book, Getting Rid of Edna, was published by Heinemann (UK) and Harper & Row (USA) in 1984. Four other titles followed from Simon and Schuster: The Meal a Mile Long (1989) and Waldorf and the Sleeping Granny (1990), which she also illustrated; followed by The Thing in the Sink (1992) and Rent-a-Friend (1994). Her most recent titles are The Tall Story (MacDonald Young Books, 1997) and Three Scary Stories (HarperCollins, 2001).
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781852244965 |
| ISBN 10 | 1852244968 |
| Title | Wooroloo |
| Author | Frieda Hughes |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Bloodaxe Books Ltd |
| Year published | 1999-03-25 |
| Number of pages | 64 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |