Description
Book SynopsisIn her second collection, printer's daughter Heidi Williamson mines the rich language and history of printing to consider themes of belonging, parenthood, love, and how we communicate, and fail to communicate, with each other. Individual, familial, and cultural inheritance is explored - through subjects ranging from Gutenberg to Gill, Kindles, Twitter, ultrasounds, the death of Diana, 3D printing, climate change, childlessness, genes, and what is downloadable. By turns sensual, playful, and stark, The Print Museum collects exhibits and fragments from this fading industrial art and displays them alongside pieces driven by the same forces of longing, loss, transformation and delight. Winner of the Poetry Category and Book by the Cover award, East Anglian Book Awards, 2016.
Trade Review'Heidi Williamson's poems are about contact with the haunted world. She understands uncertainty and loss, as well as the trace loss leaves behind as memory, memory that acts like a Blitz incendiary waiting to ignite later in life. The sensuousness of language is asserted...through tender explorations of our haunted fabric.' - George Szirtes; 'Williamson knows that poetry is a means of investigation, rigorous and disciplined; her poems often begin with a thought that a lesser poet would be content to end with. This approach is evident in the beautiful precision of her language, the way form itself becomes a means of discovery.' - Esther Morgan; 'I am a great admirer of Heidi's poetry and find her fascination with science very exciting. There isn't enough high quality poetry that is empathetic to science around and the value of her approach extends well beyond poetry.' - Professor Anne Osbourn of The Osbourn Lab, John Innes Centre (international research centre for plant science and microbiology)
