Book description
From an abandoned rowing boat in Estonia full of wild flowers to a
swimming pool in the Congo full of drowned insects, Adam Thorpe's new
collection takes us on a wide-ranging journey through states of gain
and loss, alienation and belonging. In the title poem, the poet
disturbs a flock of geese by his mere presence, and one goose takes
the wrong direction, away from the flock, as a 'voluntary exile'. A
bid for freedom, or a mistake?
These poems explore our chances, record our traces - in the marks on
skin, home movies, stone walls, the pressure of our blood, or the
clearing of a dying father's study: 'foraging backwards' until
something is revealed, however tentative. As always in Thorpe's work,
history's violence lurks in the margins: in the silent oppression of
Roman roads, a polluting pipeline in Africa or the bombing of the
Alcala train, he takes the gauge of our wider compulsions, of all that
decides things for us. Against this he sets what, through the other
meaning of 'voluntary', suggests chance's extempore music: the
gleeful play of a sea-otter, the extraordinary gift of a passing gull
to his small daughter, or poetry itself.
Adam Thorpe is now celebrated as a novelist, but he began as a poet.
Voluntary, his sixth collection, is a timely reminder of the
elegance, skill and remarkable range of this most gifted British poet.
Adam Thorpe was born in Paris in 1956. His first novel,
Ulverton
, was published in 1992, and he has written nine others - most recently
Flight
- and two collections of stories. His new translation of
Madame Bovary
has been recently published by Vintage. He lives in France with his
wife and family.
