Pessimism For Beginners
2007 Poetry Book Society Winter Choice, and shortlisted for 2007 TS Eliot Prize
‘She’s extremely good…Very, very fine.’ John Carey, Newsnight Review
Available from www.carcanet.co.uk
A poem from the book:
Something and Nothing
If you had known how little
you would have had to give
to drum into this brittle
hope the desire to live
would you have changed the venue,
your greeting or your tone
or planned things better when you
knew we’d have hours alone
and if you heard a hollow
voice spit these ill-advised
questions, would nothing follow?
I wouldn’t be surprised.
(first published in Poetry Review, Winter 2004/2005)