We Have to Leave the Earth

Disgrifiad Cymraeg / Welsh Description

Trydydd casgliad o gerddi Carolyn Jess-Cooke, sy'n plethu'r personol a'r gwleidyddol yn gelfydd. Cynhwysir cerddi am newid hinsawdd a chyfres o naw cerdd am Josephine Butler (1828-1906), ymgyrchwraig arloesol ffeministaidd, ynghyd â cherddi tyner am deulu.

Disgrifiad Saesneg / English Description

We Have To Leave The Earth , Carolyn Jess-Cooke's third book of poems, deftly interweaves the personal and the political. Climate change is confronted in a portrait of the Arctic with its 'wolf winters'. 'The House of Rest' is a history in 9 poems of Josephine Butler (1828-1906), a pioneering feminist activist. There are also tender poems about family.

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Bywgraffiad yr Awdur / Author Biography

Originally from Belfast, Carolyn Jess-Cooke is Senior Lecturer and Programme Convenor for the MLitt Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. Carolyn’s first poetry collection, 'Inroads' (Seren) received a Northern Writers Award, an Eric Gregory Award, a Tyrone Guthrie prize, an Arts Council Award, and was shortlisted for the New London Poetry Prize for Best First Collection in 2010. Her second collection 'BOOM!' explores her experiences of motherhood and received a K Blundell award from the Society of Authors and a Northern Writers Award. Carolyn has a prestigious parallel career as a novelist. Her first novel 'The Guardian Angel’s Journal' was published in 23 languages and was an international bestseller, her subsequent titles: 'The Boy Who Could See Demons', 'I Know My Name', 'The Blame Game' all did very well. The last two sold as film/TV options. Her next novel, 'The Nesting', set in Norway is published Harper Collins/Random House. She also edited the anthology 'Writing Motherhood'.

Adolygiad y Cyhoeddwr / Publisher Review

This new collection from Carolyn Jess-Cooke includes two self-contained sequences: ‘Songs for the Arctic’, and ‘The House of Rest’, inspired by Josephine Butler (to whom, along with the author’s children, the book is dedicated). As the title suggests, the sense of impending catastrophe from, and shared guilt for, climate change suffuses the collection and reaches out to the end of time and the universe, but at its heart are tender and optimistic personal poems on the poet’s relationship with her children. The splendid opening poem, ‘Now’, moves from an intimate moment with her daughter to thoughts on time and the unknown future, but ‘what is living/ if not recognising the value of now...’ The Arctic songs call up an extreme landscape, sometimes illustrated by concrete forms (the first suggesting a skein of geese or a boat’s bow wave). The place is hostile to humans unless they work with it; it is alien, but threatened by human actions. Jess-Cooke’s frequent use of unfamiliar words emphasises the otherness. In ‘Trophic Asynchrony’, seasonal disruption becomes the rebellion of time itself against mankind, mirrored in the broken lines. When humans fail and the earth itself dies in ice or fire, ‘Ode to a Tardigrade’ speaks of indomitable life. Dark poems such as ‘Sagittarius A*’ blend personal trauma, breakdown and restoration with cosmic themes. Several poems concern Jess-Cooke’s autistic daughter, Willow, her development and their mutual love. ‘At Sports Day’ is particularly touching, as is ‘Little Hand’, which is in strong contrast with the poem on her father’s self-destructive hand. ‘The House of Rest’ recounts Josephine Butler’s protection and championing of ‘fallen women’, which is connected to her suffering at the accidental death of her young daughter. ‘Her absence is a mouth which holds me between fear’s teeth / longing / for just one word.’ In the final section the author brings together the tenderness of ‘Sweet Pea’ and ‘Hymn to be Sung Underwater’ (to the earth as mother and host) with the darkest poems: ‘Thwaites’, in which the earth, having warned in vain, now promises disaster, and ‘Home-schooling’, in which the author is overwhelmed by the horror of human historic guilt and present evil when she tries to teach her children ‘what’s happening / right now’, which gives a dark echo to the opening poem. Perhaps the final poem, ‘The Sky Beneath Our Feet’, which speaks of ‘boundless re-beginning’, is hopeful of a better world (or universe) to come. This fine collection is both personal and profoundly universal, and speaks powerfully to the fears and hopes of current generations.