Description
Book SynopsisHow to Carry Fire was born from the ashes of family addiction. Beginning with the burning down of her childhood home, Thatcher explores how fire can both destroy and cleanse. Her work recognises embers everywhere: in farmhouses, heroin needles, poisonous salamanders. Thatcher reveals how fire is internalised and disclosed through anxiety, addiction, passion and love. Underneath and among the flames runs the American and Welsh landscapes - locations which, like fire itself, offer up experiences which mesmerise, burn and purify. This poignant second collection reminds us of how the most dangerous and volatile fires can forge us - even long after the flames have died down.
Trade Review'In the brave and moving poems of How to Carry Fire, Christina Thatcher writes powerfully of the things that love can survive. This book has lived a life, and the poet has the ability to shape experience into unforgettable writing. I admire it for the way it looks big problems full in the face, and comes back with a store of beauty. This is a poet with her own world, who is shaping an important body of writing. Just as, in the collection's exemplary opening poem, a family tries to itemise its losses, so these significant, memorable poems add to the store of the world's treasures.' - Jonathan Edwards
