Fair's Fair, Susan Utting's third full poetry collection has been described as `joyous, heartbreaking, ramm'd with life'. In these poems dead creatures (a stuffed bird, a taxidermist's zebra) and people (a lovable, garrulous old man, a strange, moon-faced woman) come back to life. The graveyard dead join in the partying and after-hours drinking in the village pub; a lament becomes a celebration of life. Full of desires and ambitions - some fulfilled, some thwarted, from learning to read to reaching the moon, from shape-shifting to living without mirrors - poems are paired to speak to, or reflect each other. Themes and stories chain-react and echo throughout the book in Utting's trademark rich vocabulary, strong rhythms and distinctive patterns of sound. Fair's Fair continues to fulfil Adrian Mitchell's description of Susan Utting's work: `Her poems are musical, magical and have a clarity which goes straight to the heart.'

About the Author
SUSAN UTTING was born in South London, moved twenty times in forty years, then settled, after a fashion, in Berkshire. Notions of home, identity and where she comes from frequently feature in her writing, and are again explored in this book, as are the shifting lives of other women, the Half the Human Race of the title. Susan studied Creative Writing at Sussex University and English with film and drama at Reading University, where she subsequently taught for more than 17 years. Her awards include an Arts Council Laureateship, Poetry Business Pamphlet Prize, The Berkshire Poetry Prize, The Peterloo Prize and a writing fellowship at Reading's School of English and American Literature. Her poems have been widely published, including in The Times, TLS, The Independent, Forward Book of Poetry, The Poetry Review and Poems on the Underground. Her work was selected by the London Poetry Library to be recorded for Poetry International at the South Bank Centre, where it was broadcast along with other international poets' work. Half the Human Race follows and includes selections from three earlier collections: Striptease (Smith/Doorstop), Houses Without Walls (Two Rivers Press) and Fair's Fair (also TRP).

Reviews

'One of the many rewards of Fair's Fair lies in the way Susan Utting weaves the details of teeth, needlework and cocktail umbrellas into the pulse of the rumba. These poems shimmy in the mind long after closing the cover' - Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch

Elegiac and sensuous, pressing and haunting in their almost hallucinatory narrative detail, the poems in Fair's Fair reveal Susan Utting's capacity to move us at its most powerful yet - a new collection of great skill and lucid tenderness.' - Jane Draycott

Book Information
ISBN 9781901677805
Author Susan Utting
Format Paperback
Page Count 56
Imprint Two Rivers Press
Publisher Two Rivers Press