Arguing with Malarchy is full of voices: tender, sinister or angry, they compel us to attend to their realities, the glimpsed depths of their stories, the distances they have travelled. Carola Luther's poems are alert to the ways a life can be briefly snared in the turn of a phrase - or in the moment when lanaguage fails. She explores silence, absences, the unspoken communication between animals and human beings, the pauses and boundaries between what is remembered, forgotten or invented, the living and the dead. In the book's first part, a chronicle of mourning writes out of the silence into 'the bare threads of tunes', to begin a new story. In the second part, Luther's characters live in their language: 'Keep talking,' the old man tells Malarchy. We travel through elemental landscapes of sea and sky, shadows and wide savannahs that exist beyond language and sustain when words are silenced.
About the AuthorCarola Luther was born in South Africa in 1959 and moved to the UK in 1981. Her first collection Walking the Animals (Carcanet) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2004. Her poems ahve appeared in various journals and anthologies and she collaborates with the jazz musician Jenni Molloy. She lives and works in Yorkshire.
Book InformationISBN 9781847770936
Author Carola LutherFormat Paperback
Page Count 82
Imprint Carcanet Press LtdPublisher Carcanet Press Ltd