The School of Night

Anne Rouse is a keenly observant writer of spiky satirical portraits and shapely lyrics of the ordinary and the bizarre. The ""schooling"" in this book happens over a long night in Scotland, London, the south coast of England, and Virginia where she grew up. The School of Night opens at twilight but quickly shifts to the midnight street, where the visionary jostles with the comic. Nightmare beings, monsters of both genders and a highwaywoman inhabit the small hours. Sunrise inspires both the exuberantly innovative `Starlings' (reading from the foot of the page upwards), and a menacing narrative about a human wolf escorting a partygoer home. Navigating through the nocturnal labyrinth to achieve its final powerful moments, The School of Night celebrates both journeys and awakenings.

Ann Rouse was born in Washington DC and grew up in Virginia. After reading History at the University of London, she worked as a nurse and the director of a mental health charity. Since becomming a freelance writer, she had many residencies, including visting fellowship in Glasgow and in autumn 2004 in Belfast. She has published three collections with bloodaxe, sunset grill(1993) and timming (1997)- both poetry book society Recomendaition The school of night(2004) She reads a selection of poems from these books on Poetry Quaters 9, and she lives in Hastings.