Book description
The poems in Owen Lowery's first collection speak in a range of
voices, offer glimpses into many lives and many worlds. At the same
time, we hear in all of them Lowery's own voice. Incorporating
elements from English, Welsh, Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese and Italian
poetic traditions, he develops form deftly, giving his work a
beautiful, risky movement and musicality. Many of his poems pay
tribute to poets writing in the face of war: he enters the worlds of
Paul Celan, Keith Douglas, Alun Lewis, Edward Thomas, and - in a
powerful sequence based on If This Is a Man - Primo Levi. Other poems
are more directly personal, the poet's confessions both wry and
tender: 'Your trademark switching the light on / from the bottom of
the stairs / wakes the open secret of his / thank you prayer.' The
poet was a British Judo champion but suffered a spinal injury in 1987,
as a result of which he is now a ventilator-dependent C2-level
tetraplegic. With Otherwise Unchanged, Owen Lowery embarks on a
momentous and moving journey.
