Fleet

Judith Willson's second book of poems, Fleet, explores elusive histories and lost voices, with the title suggesting imperial power, conquest, and traffic in commodities. It works outwards from found text into other places and times, revealing stories that haunt our present.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 80 pages
Publication date: 25 February 2021
Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd

In 1878, a woman in London was sentenced to prison for abandoning two of her children, a claim she vehemently refuted. Almost nothing else is known about her life or that of her husband, a dealer in foreign birds and curiosities who was also a migrant. The two children disappeared from the record. This is where Fleet begins, with elusive histories and lost voices. The title evokes imperial power, conquest, and the trade in commodities, which in the nineteenth century included a vast number of exotic birds. It is also shrouded in other meanings: the fleeting glimpse and swift flight; floating memories, enigmatic and insistent. Judith Willson's second book of poems was written during a period when migration and displacement have become essential aspects of the human experience. The collection expands outward from found text—historical documents, archive materials—into other places and times. In the silences of such records, their erasures and omissions, are stories that haunt our present.

Weight: 112g
Dimension: 135 x 215 x 10 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781800170247