Book description
Gillian Clarke's poems are letters from the far countries of
personal and ancestral memories, of places and moments of insight. Her
acclaimed title poem explores the buried histories of women's lives,
the enduring responsibilities that link generations and ensure the
continuance of language and traditions. Rooted in rural Wales, Letter
from a Far Country celebrates the sources of strength and continuity
that bind people to landscape and community.
'Clarke's poetry...gives voice to the unexpressed emotions and
experiences of women over the centuries...this, together with the way in
which her Welshness is such an integral part of her sensibility and her
poetry helps to make Gillian Clarke one of our most important
contemporary writers' - New Welsh Review 'Clarke's work is both personal
and archetypal, built out of language as concrete as it is musical.' -
Anne Stevenson, Times Literary Supplement 'Clarke...reminds us that
simply expressed facts can sometimes shine more memorably than
fireworks.' - Carol Rumens, The Independent Born in Cardiff, Gillian
Clarke is a poet, playwright, editor, broadcaster, lecturer and
translator (from Welsh). She edited the Anglo-Welsh Review from 1975 to
1984, and has taught creative writing in primary and secondary schools
and at university level. She is a former president of Ty Newydd, the
writers' centre in North Wales which she co-founded in 1990. Since 1994
she has been a tutor in Creative Writing at the University of Glamorgan.
Clarke was the inaugural Capital Poet for Cardiff 2005-6. Her poetry is
studied by GCSE and A Level students throughout Britain. She has given
poetry readings and lectures in Europe and the United States, and her
work has been translated into ten languages. She has a daughter and two
sons, and now lives with her architect husband on a smallholding in
Ceredigion, Wales, where they raise a small flock of sheep, and care for
the land according to organic and conservation practice.
