Description
Book SynopsisThe Guest Room, Diana Hendry’s new collection of poems, continues her always perceptive explorations of family, childhood and finding oneself, encounters with people (whether neighbours or strangers) and animals (pets or otherwise). Added to this is her embracing of Seamus Heaney’s notion of poetry paying attention to the world, here including climate change, coronavirus, political prisoners, Palestine and the health service, for example – never preachy, telling it slant.There’s pleasure to be found throughout, in her craft and characteristic wry humour and in what U.A.Fanthorpe called her ‘remarkable eye for the truth and an ability to see the otherness in the ordinary.’
Trade Review‘generosity of spirit’ Richie McCaffery ‘riches of feeling, unexpected depths and meanings, and a jolt to the senses in every tightly-controlled poem’ James Roderick Burns
Table of ContentsContents Skara Brae 1 Mr Obama and the Chemist 2 Mother with scissors 3 Smokers 4 Cabbage Whites 6 Market Street 7 Poste Restante 8 Vagabonds 9 The Last Dog 11 Mulligan 12 Dear Old Growler 13 The Harlequin Ladybird 14 The heron complains of his reputation 15 The Octopus 16 Talking Toad 17 A death in the time of coronavirus 19 A&E 20 Vax 21 Skulking 22 The Insomniac’s Café 23 Unsteadiness 24 In the Margins 25 The Haar 27 Melancholy 28 From: Where I Was Before Us 29 The Porch 30 In the Sitting Room 31 Father’s Dream 32 Mother in the kitchen 33 Hoylake 3594 34 Before we go 35 Ottoman 36 The Trainee Angel of Mingladoon 37 Their Room 38 Her Room 39 The Spare Room 40 The Guest Room 41 Nepalese Namaste 43 Cheer Leader 44 Helen’s Whites 45 Writing to the President ofTunisia 46 A Piano in Gaza 47 The Unvisited 48 The Empty Road 49 Dr Braun’s thoughts on love 50 Freya and St Cuthbert 51 Freya and the people in the books. 52 The Couple Downstairs 53 Dear Ms and Mr X 54 My Neighbour, Mrs Baker 55 The Shadow Tree 56 Summer with Mr Jonathan Back 57 The Man in the Harbour Café 58 Epithalamion 59 Three Haiku 61 Possibly 63 A Village in Heaven 64 The Light Collector 65 The Way Flowers Die 66 From the Footlight Flats: to whom it may concern 67 We wanted different rivers 68 To Cut a Long Story Short 69 The Quest 71 Nearby 75
