Story of a river is told in poetry and prose (From Ludlow Advertiser)

Story of a river is told in poetry and prose

2:00pm Thursday 9th July 2009

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TO coincide with Ledbury Poetry Festival, this month’s Advertiser Book Group selection is Dart by Forward Poetry Prize-winner Alice Oswald.

Dart combines verse and prose to tell the story of the River Dart in Devon, where she lives, “made from the language of the people who live and work on the Dart.”

The poem came from three years collecting information about the river and talking to people who use the river in their daily lives.

The result, said Jeanette Winterson is “a moving, changing poem, as fast-flowing as the river and as deep … a celebration of difference.”

Dart won the T S Eliot Prize in 2002.

It is a poem made from the language of people who live and work on the Dart, for which Alice Oswald used the recordings she made over the three years “to link their voices into a sound-map of the river, a songline from the source to the sea.

“One of the aims of this poem is to reconnect the local imagination to its environment – in particular, in these years of water shortages and floods, to increase people’s awareness of water as a natural resource.

“But I’m also interested, for its own sake, in the idea of a many-voiced poem, a poem that benefits from the freshness and expertise of ordinary people.”

Alice Oswald lives in Dartington, Devon, and works as a gardener on the Dartington Estate.

Her first collection of poetry, The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile (1996), includes poems reflecting her love of gardening and the entertaining long poem, The Men of Gotham.

This collection won a Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) in 1996, and was shortlisted for the T. S.

Eliot Prize in 1997.

In 2004, Alice Oswald was named as one of the Poetry Book Society's ‘Next Generation’ poets.

Her collection, Woods etc., was published in 2005, and was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) and the T. S. Eliot Prize. In 2007, her poem Dunt won the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem).

Her latest books are Weeds and Wild Flowers (2009), illustrated by Jessica Greenman, and A Sleepwalker on the Severn (2009), a poem for several voices.

■ Order Dart (RRP £8.99) for £8.50 with free postage and packing, by calling 08700 713317 or visiting sparkledirect.

com.

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