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Visiting the Minotaur
Paperback
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- Book Synopsis
- Claire Williamson has written a vivid collection of poems: Visiting the Minotaur, full of artful reflections, refractions and re-workings of incidents that reveal a fraught childhood and adolescence, a family riddled with dark secrets and tragedy, and her ensuing quest to escape this legacy and create a happier household for her own family. Each poem fashions its own wordscape of love and loss. Sometimes the author borrows from classic mythology. The image of the minotaur, the beast in the labyrinth, recurs and helps the poet come to terms with and exorcise the violence she experienced as a child. Other useful analogies are found in cubist paintings or etchings, such as the Picasso that inspired the title poem. The labyrinth is sometimes the screen of secrets that keep the author from discovering the facts of her identity ('Red Herrings'), sometimes it is the Streets of Bristol where the young protagonist has run to escape her difficult family ('Brizzle'), sometimes it is the formal strategies the author uses to convey her various themes, the stepped or broken lines, the fractured stanzas. There are some well-observed poems about the physical aspects of motherhood that add to the literature of that genre. Women will concur with the paradox of 'Breastfeeding' where one side is agony and the other, bliss. The poems are not without considerable humour, delicate ironies, tender observations and just plain fun. 'Cows' get their splendid moment in the "lemon light", and we meet 'Laika' the first dog in outer space.
- About The Author
- Claire Williamson has an MA in Literary Studies, (UWE), and is a Senior Fellow of Higher Education Academy and Programme Leader for the Msc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes at the Metanoia Institute in London. She is currently studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at Cardiff University. She is the author of a couple of previous collections: Ride On, and The Soulwater Pool. Individual poems have appeared widely in magazines. She has worked closely with Welsh National Opera since 2003, writing the words for Cardiff City Songs, Billy and the Dragon and The Merman King, all WNO MAX productions and also is involved in musical collaborations including 'Home by Christmas' which was performed by 350 singers at Colston Hall to commemorate 100 years since the outbreak of WW1, and was nominated for the British Composer Awards in 2015. She has written chapters in academic books on themes of creative writing and health. Williamson has recently moved with her family from Bristol to Chepstow. Claire is a member of the Spoke poetry group, well known for their electric readings..
- Product Details
-
- ISBN
- 9781781724439
- Format
- Paperback
- Publisher
- Seren, (30 April 2018)
- Number of Pages
- 62
- Weight
- 84 grams
- Language
- English
- Dimensions
- 216 x 149 x 6 mm
- Categories: