The Months is a book of poems about time - not only the attritions of time, its ageings, conflicts and illnesses, but also, and more importantly, the kind of time the French philosopher Bergson called 'duration', a human time that speeds up or slows, expands and contracts, measured by perceptual rather than scientific laws. At the centre of the collection, the long title-poem interweaves material from two pregnancies spanning two generations: these months open themselves up to insecurities and dreams, culture, myths, everyday realities and moments of fear or delight. The two births that end this compelling narrative take the book in a new direction, to a time and place where it is possible to stand still and watch a saucepan drying on a draining-board or cycle round a mountainous island at age sixty, laugh at oneself, or even begin again.

About the Author
Susan Wicks has published seven collections of poetry, four of them with Bloodaxe Books: The Months (2016), House of Tongues (2011), De-iced (2007) and Night Toad: New & Selected Poems (2003), which includes a selection from three earlier books published by Faber: Singing Underwater, winner of the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Prize; Open Diagnosis, which was one of the Poetry Society's New Generation Poets titles; and The Clever Daughter, a Poetry Book Society Choice which was shortlisted for both T.S. Eliot and Forward Prizes. House of Tongues, Night Toad, Singing Underwater and The Months are all Poetry Book Society Recommendations. She has also published three novels, The Key (Faber, 1997), Little Thing (Faber, 1998) and A Place to Stop (Salt, 2012), a short memoir, Driving My Father (Faber, 1995), and a collection of short fiction, Roll Up for the Arabian Derby (Bluechrome, 2008). Her two book-length translations of the French poet Valerie Rouzeau, Cold Spring in Winter (Arc, 2009) and Talking Vrouz (Arc, 2013) have between them won the Scott Moncrieff Prize for Translation from French and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize for Literary Translation, and been shortlisted for the the International Griffin Prize for Poetry. Born and raised in Kent, she lives in Tunbridge Wells, and is a freelance writer and translator.

Reviews
'Wicks can be both a fearless and arrestingly tender kind of writer, unafraid of taking a thought into uncomfortable, raw or unexpected places... confessions and punishments, banishments and betrayals, all are rendered in the mouths of the past or looked at from the aftermath of the present. Seeming to rise darkly in pitch at the end of the collection, they adjust our sense of the easier poems, and further deepen the focus of this mysterious and powerful book.' - Paul Farley, PBS Bulletin, on House of Tongues; 'A poet of deceptive power, who can transmute everyday objects and events into poems with an understated numinous edge.' - Kathleen Jamie, PBS Bulletin; 'A fine poet, with an eye for detail and a gift for conveying the earthiness of everyday experience.' - Jo Shapcott, Independent on Sunday



Book Information
ISBN 9781780372907
Author Susan Wicks
Format Paperback
Page Count 80
Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publisher Bloodaxe Books Ltd