Erato (Paperback)

Deryn Rees-Jones

ISBN 10: 1781725101 / ISBN 13: 9781781725108

Published by Poetry Wales Press, Bridgend, 2019

About this Item

Paperback. Erato takes its title from the muse of lyric poetry. At the centre is an interrogation of the lyric as a vehicle to write the world, both the beauty and the horror. Drawing on documentary-style narratives of her life, combined with lyric reinventions, Rees-Jones asks questions about past, present and future, about the slippages of memory, all our errors and erasures, and the places we inhabit when processing trauma. It is a book full of flames and scars, landscape and animals, and at its heart the transformative music that runs beneath words, and the bodies we inhabit when we love. Erato takes its title from the muse of lyric poetry. Drawing on brief, documentary-style narratives of her life, combined with lyric reinventions, Deryn Rees-Jones asks questions about past, present and future, about the slippages of memory, all our errors and erasures, and the places we inhabit when processing trauma. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781781725108

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Erato (Paperback)
• Publisher: Poetry Wales Press, Bridgend
• Publication Date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1781725101
• ISBN 13: 9781781725108
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

Named after the Greek muse of lyric poetry, Erato combines documentary-style prose narratives with the passionate lyric poetry for which Rees-Jones is renowned. Here, however, as she experiments with form, particularly the sonnet, Rees-Jones asks questions about the value of the poet and poetry itself. What is the difference, she asks in one poem, between a sigh and a song? Erato’s themes are manifold but particularly focus on personal loss, desire and recovery, in the context of a world in which wars and displacement of people has become a terrifying norm. In the narrative of transformations that unfold, the invocation of Erato also carries with it a sense of errata and erasure. As stories and ideas are repeated, and recurring imagery -- of fires, bees, birds – is continually reframed, we are asked to replay, rethink, rename. How do we step out from the ‘perpetual loop’ of trauma? And how do we find a way of processing painful change? Here, bewilderment in the face of ongoing historical tragedy is countered by the Rees-Jones’s close and careful attention to immediate or remembered experience, and the importance of the body, whether this is lying awake at night with a sleepless child, the felling of a backyard tree, walking in Paris observing the encampments of refugees, or the dreamlike conversation she has with the radio about bombs and the use of drones. Erato includes elegies for family members and close friends, including an impressive and moving long poem ‘I.M.’. Also included here is the autobiographical ‘Caprice’ in which Rees-Jones explores with musical abandon ‘the scribble-mess’ of self, and the ‘grainy, atomized emotion coursing through in middle age’. Throughout Erato there is a compelling sense of continued curiosity, of thoughtful questioning, of questing for truths. The author’s background in the classics, her immersion in modern poetry as well as a deep interest in modern art, all combine to influence the essential quality of this work. Erato is Deryn Rees-Jones’ fifth collection of poetry for Seren.

About the Author

Deryn Rees-Jones works as a poet, editor and critic. She is Professor of Poetry at Liverpool University, and editor of the poetry series for Pavilion Press (Liverpool University Press).