In this intimate, confiding poetry collection, McGuinness shows how identity is layered, permeable, always in motion - how we are always actor and audience to ourselves

'This is McGuinness's best collection by far, and stands out from the crowd'
SUNDAY TIMES

In Blood Feather, a book of doubling and displacement, we see time in a new way: the past, personal and collective, lingering as an ever-present ghost - while lost beyond recall.

The first section, 'Squeeze the Day' - a series of deeply moving poems about the author's mother, displaced between languages - investigates her illness and death; how being bilingual is like having a double, a second self; how each self haunts the other. 'The Noises Things Make When They Leave' elegises today's post-industrial landscapes, their people and professions: sidelined by literature, bypassed by globalisation. The final sequence, 'After the Flood', links the book's themes, seeking a way of seeing things for the first time and the last time simultaneously. Exploring the gaps between languages and between our selves in language, Patrick McGuinness dreams of a new tense in which the world's losses are redeemed:

It's the anniversary of my mother's death,
and it's my mother's birthday -
the day she short-circuited the tenses,
made the current flow both ways.

A clear-sighted, intimate new poetry collection from the prizewinning author of Other People's Countries and Throw me to the Wolves.

About the Author
Patrick McGuinness is the author of two previous books of poetry, two novels, The Last Hundred Days and Throw Me to the Wolves, and a non-fiction book about place, time and memory, and his mother's small Belgian border town of Bouillon - Other People's Countries - which was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley Prize and the James Tait Black Prize, won the Wales Book of the Year, and the Duff Cooper Prize. He is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at St Anne's College, Oxford.

Reviews
This is McGuinness's best collection by far, and stands out from the crowd * Sunday Times *
An eloquent fusion of the delicate and the direct * Financial Times, *Summer Reads of 2023* *
McGuinness has a delightfully distinctive voice... His buoyant imagination always carries the day... He can be breathtakingly simple, and to have written one poem as good as 'Tired Metaphor' is enough for any writer in any year * Times Literary Supplement, *Books of the Year* *
Arresting... Reminds us that the best poetry is often that which never makes it from the notebook * Guardian *
Patrick McGuinness writes of the other country of childhood with Proustian elan and Nabokovian delight -- John Banville, author of The Sea
A deeply moving book of poems... Shimmering with the "sweet dark syrup" of humour, and gorgeous sleights of imagery, these are poems of extraordinary grace; they come up for air with their cupped hands empty, yet brimming with light -- Fiona Benson, author of Ephemeron
An extraordinary writer of great compassion -- Denise Mina, author of The Field of Blood
The brilliance of Patrick McGuinness's writing has made his memories unforgettable to the reader -- Adam Foulds, author of The Quickening Maze
Brilliant... A book alive with understated yearning * Literary Review *



Book Information
ISBN 9780224098311
Author Patrick McGuinness
Format Paperback
Page Count 80
Imprint Jonathan Cape Ltd
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Weight(grams) 100g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 133mm * 9mm