Trees become myriad versions (instalments) of themselves without verging onto an unsensing multiplicity as they traverse partially resistant or patient terrains: so these poems explore contrasting tree-states, as sticks or joints, filters of directional light or self-submerged hedges, which are all manners of contraction, extension, mediation, shareable expression. "Larkin's 'theological poetics' assumes a world in which we could be said to be 'short of nothing', however 'scarcely' this is apprehended." --Simon Collings "With relation to the holy as subtext, Trees Before Abstinent Ground continues Peter Larkin's dense and enticing meditations with trees. Larkin's poems lure the reader to attend to the incarnational alterity of trees. Through saturated language, the reader encounters trees' vertical customs and feral horizons, as they engage with the habit and culture of light." --Anne Elvey

About the Author
Peter Larkin was born in the New Forest and has spent most of his life either haunted by trees or the gaps (heathland or urban) between them. From an Anglo-French background, his work has been influenced as much by post-war French poetry as it has been by American Modernism. For much of his career he was Philosophy & Literature Librarian at Warwick University.


Book Information
ISBN 9781848616752
Author Peter Larkin
Format Paperback
Page Count 112
Imprint Shearsman Books
Publisher Shearsman Books
Weight(grams) 177g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 7mm