Partial Shade: Poems New and Selected

Partial Shade is a collection of poetry by John Birtwhistle that explores themes of politics, parenting, mortality, art, and love. The poems are arranged in a fresh order, conversing and arguing with each other across the years. The book includes poems from out-of-print collections and substantial new poems, with a variety of rhythms from lyric and narrative to haiku-like miniatures. Birtwhistle is praised for his versatility and intellectual gadfly nature, with his poetry characterized by deep feeling, visual precision, and formal clarity.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 176 pages
Publication date: 29 June 2023
Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd

Partial Shade is a common gardening term for plants that require a measure of sunshine. In John Birtwhistle's poems, there is a continuous play of light and shadow, and even glimpses of full sun. This selection from his own work does not follow chronology. It is an entirely fresh ordering, in which poems converse and argue with each other across the years. Lines about politics, parenting, mortality, art (and love, that bookish theme), are plied together, intimate yet distinct. Partial Shade is a new book for new readers. It makes available poems from out-of-print collections, as well as substantial new poems. The rhythm varies from lyric and narrative poems to haiku-like miniatures: agile, mobile, and eventful (Hugh Haughton). John Birtwhistle is a marvellously versatile intellectual gadfly of a poet. No sooner do we think that we know his manner, his theme, than he is off elsewhere, teasing, amusing, throwing out possibilities like sweets strewn along a woodland path. (Michael Glover) The poetry is distinguished by deep feeling conveyed with visual precision, careful phrasing, and formal clarity. Peter Jay writes of "These lucid, witty, tender poems, full of felicitous surprises and unexpected turns of imagination," while Imtiaz Dharker finds them "So rich in scope and style, with surprising shifts and echoes."

Dimension: 216 x 135 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781800173231