Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru
Afternoons Go Nowhere
Afternoons Go Nowhere
Couldn't load pickup availability
Disgrifiad Cymraeg / Welsh Description
Degfed casgliad o gerddi Sheenagh Pugh. Gwelir ynddo ddealltwriaeth craff o'r cyflwr dynol: caiff gwendidau brenhinoedd, brenhinesau a phobl gyffredin sylw manwl gan y bardd. Mae'r casgliad yn cynnwys dilyniant o gerddi nodedig am daleithiau yng Nghanada yn ogystal â gwaith wedi'i ysbrydoli gan ei chartref yn Shetland.
Disgrifiad Saesneg / English Description
Afternoons Go Nowhere is poet Sheenagh Pugh's tenth collection. An acute understanding of the human condition enlivens these poems: the foibles of historical kings, queens and commoners are exposed to her sharply scrutinising eye. There is a notable sequence of poems about Canadian provinces as well as work inspired by her home in Shetland.
Manylion y cynnyrch / Product details
- ISBN 13
- 9781781724989
- Gwales Code
- gwales.com.9781781724989
- Gwerthwr / Vendor
- Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru
- Long Title
- Afternoons Go Nowhere
- Awdur / Author
- Pugh, Sheenagh
- Current Price ex VAT
- £9.99
- Current Price inc VAT
- £9.99
- Availability Status (EN)
- Non-Stock Item - Ordered on request
- Availability Status (CY)
- Archebir yn ôl y galw
- Dyddiad cyhoeddi / Publication Date
- 2019-05-03
- Cyhoeddwr / Publisher
- Seren
- Media Type (EN)
- Paperback / softback
- Media Type (CY)
- Clawr meddal
- Pages
- 72 pages
- Size
- 138 × 216 mm
- Language Code
- English
- Categori / Category
- CY: Barddoniaeth (yn Saesneg) | EN: Poetry (in English)
- Is-gategori / Subcategory
- CY: Beirdd Unigol (yn Saesneg) | EN: Individual Poets (in English)
Bywgraffiad yr Awdur / Author Biography
Sheenagh Pugh is the author of ten poetry collections, two 'Selected Poems', two novels and a critical book on fan fiction. She also translates poetry from Russian, German and Ancient Greek. She says, on her website: "My interests are language, history, northern landscapes from Shetland to the Arctic and all points in between, snooker, mortality, cyberspace (I waste massive amounts of time online) and above all, people."
Adolygiad y Cyhoeddwr / Publisher Review
This immensely enjoyable collection, the poet’s tenth, ranges through a cast of characters from different periods, travels across Canada’s time zones, brings us Shetland, the poet’s home turf, and reminds us humans, with our hubris and divisive tendencies, of our very temporary tenure, set against nature’s deeper time-scales: ‘The border/is reshaping itself, unseen, as it has/since earth hardened’, while ‘the short-term tenants,/ guarding the ground they call their own,/scowl across the wire, measuring/the distance a bullet need go/to end a brief stay sooner’. Such sad folly in the on-going human story is a theme that trickles through this collection, but there is also a humane humour at work, and a deeply observant eye. What we get are choice moments from the annals of history, along with glimpses into ordinary human lives, most of which are destined to become forgotten. There is a tenderness shown towards being here , with a concern that lives, with their sometimes simple qualities, should matter, even though they be ‘no more/than a neighbour’s good nature,/a workman’s craft, a joker’s quick wit’. Those attributes ‘are soon gone’ and yet, ‘they were , as surely as cliff and leaf’. History is one of this poet’s interests and runs as a rich seam through the poems. The book starts with a vivid poem that transports the reader to 1381, as John of Gaunt’s London residence, the Palace of Savoy, is ransacked by the peasants in their revolt against the introduction of a poll tax. Written in first person, as one of the peasants following the orders of Walter ‘Wat’ Tyler, the ‘sacking’ is imagined in rich detail, with a sympathy for the peasants, who follow an ethic of ‘no looting’. There are touching moments where the men feel for the beautiful stuff they are ruining: ‘I saw men lay velvet/to their cheeks, stroke silk with fingertips/before their knives ripped through it’. The ‘silver cups … fell/at our feet, grimacing up//like pained faces’ and jewels are ‘ground … into flinders’. One transgressor, who couldn’t help himself and stole a goblet, ‘we drowned’ because ‘honour’ was needed that day, was ‘all we had’. The poems move through time to pause at various historical points to bring us characters like Charles VI, the ‘mad’ king of France who imagined himself transparent, made of glass, ‘Nothing of him/but is open to view’. Then ‘Ça ira’ sings of the French Revolution’s aspirations ‘to make the world work a better way’ where, however, ‘everyone’s dream’ of ‘freedom, equality, brotherhood’ turned to nightmare as ‘the axe … chopped and chopped’. The poem’s breezy Panglossian refrain, ‘It’ll be fine, it’ll be okay’, is ironically set against every grand aspiration. Despite humanity’s longing ‘to learn’, despite that which ‘gropes for light’, earthing the dream has proven chronically elusive: ‘freedom, equality, brotherhood,/… just not today’. In ‘Ronald’, the focus is not on the human hero, Lord Cardigan, but his horse. The context is the Charge of the Light Brigade, and the deliberately simple diction, created through a predominance of single-syllable words, creates a spare story-telling voice. The narrative is told in eleven clipped three-line stanzas, where pathos is powerfully evoked: ‘Some horses break,/lie screaming, thrashing/in the smell of blood.//Or their man breaks/and they stay by him, nuzzling his face’. But the tale is equally comic: Ronald, surviving his battle-field horror, ‘lived to be old’, and the poet imagines him dozing off after a dose of laudanum, ‘(against a wall,/let’s hope, like Marvin’s horse/in Cat Ballou)’. The Shetland poems capture an atmospheric sense of place, with long winters, low light, the might of the North Sea. ‘Afternoons Go Nowhere’, the title poem, is set as the tourist season ends, when ‘Butter hardens in the dish overnight’. The locals are caught out as ‘Dark falls early’ and ‘Radiators cough into life’. The poem suggests that ‘no one is ever quite ready/for this’ coming of winter, this being stopped in one’s tracks, with work still to do, and the poem ends with a ‘half-hope’ that time itself would be less keen, ‘would let things slide by … finishing what started late’. Admirable in this admirable collection is the poem ‘Head Gulls’, which pricks pomposity by praising the common gull, those jesters and iconoclasts – for wherever a king’s ‘statue stares over folk’s heads/with that trademark, costive sublimity,/there’ll be a seagull cackling in his curls’. The sculptor may have ‘done his best to imbue/the florid features with … nobility’, but ‘all is undone/by the republican, bolshie, sarcastic seagull/perched on his head’. This collection is an entertaining adventure from first to last. Witty, astute and moving in equal measure, it is a blast of clear air from the North.
Share
