Full Description
New Selected Poems is a poet's choice of over thirty years' work. Minhinnick's poetry explores the complexities of belonging in the world. It is rooted in the rich particularity of industrial south Wales and the Welsh seaside resort in which he now lives, but its scope is global. New Selected Poems includes 'An Opera in Baghdad' as well as translations from six modern Welsh language poets; it mourns the ancient, savaged landscape of Iraq and listens to primeval echoes in the Welsh landscape; it celebrates the rhythms of the Americas. For Minhinnick, people, relationships and landscapes interconnect. The poetry that is true to that world is both lyrical and highly political.
Cover photograph © Robert Minhinnick
Contents
from A Thread in the Maze (1978)
Sap
Short Wave
A Live Tradition
Garlic Mustard, from Herbals
Dawn: Cwrt y Felin
1921: The Grandfather's Story
from Native Ground (1979)
Ways of Learning
The Children
J.P.
Llangewydd
The Drinking Art
Insomnia
Sker
from Life Sentences (1983)
Rhys
Driving in Fog
Catching My Breath
An Address
On the Headland
Burmese Tales
from The Dinosaur Park (1985)
The Dinosaur Park
On the Llyn Fawr Hoard in the National Museum of Wales
Dock
Eelers
The Resort
Picking
from Breaking Down
from The Looters (1989)
The Looters
'What's the Point of Being Timid when the House is Falling Down?'
The Mansion
Epilogue
from Fairground Music
Men
In the Watchtower
Looking for Arthur
from Hey Fatman (1994)
Homework
Daisy at the Court
A History of Dunraven
Hey Fatman
Reunion Street
Listening to History
The Swimming Lesson
from After the Hurricane (2002)
The Bombing of Baghdad as seen from an Electrical Goods Shop
Twenty-Five Laments for Iraq
The Discovery of Radioactivity
Carioca
Songs for the Lugmen
She Drove a 'Seventies Plymouth
Neolithic
The Porthcawl Preludes
From the Rock Pool
from The Adulterer's Tongue (2003)
Belly Button Song (from 'Botwm i'r Botwm Bol', by Menna Elfyn)
Taliesin (from 'Taliesin', by Emyr Lewis)
Beginning to Forget (from 'Dechrau'r Anghofio', by Gwyneth Lewis)
Landscape without a Hat (from 'Tirlun heb Het', by Bobi Jones)
A Song about Soup (from 'Cawl', by Elin ap Hywel)
Automobiles (from 'Ceir', by Iwan Llwyd)
from King Driftwood (2008)
An Opera in Baghdad
The Hourglass
La Otra Orilla
Eavesdropping
The Castaway
The Saint of Tusker Rock
The Fox in the National Museum of Wales
Index of Titles and First Lines
