Poetry
Category: Individual Collections, Poetry
Number of pages: 64
ISBN: 9781854114389
Publication date: October 2, 2007
Price: £7.99
Here is a book of ghosts, from the mysterious traveller in the title poem who, mistaken for another man, starts to crave his new alter ego, to the first person of ‘Between Two Bridges’, Henry’s long poem on Newport, who follows his teenage ghost across the city for a night:
He pulls away. The wind puts its lips to an arcade.
A seagull on a barber’s pole waits to open its blades.
How the living haunt themselves is the concern of Ingrid’s Husband, and the author discovers his spirits through an imagery of absences: a child’s signature in the dust of an old guitar; the stone plinth where a café once stood; a white balloon drifting down a shopping arcade; a chateau, still furnished with the belongings of its vanished owner…
Love continues to underscore the commonplace in Paul Henry’s fifth collection and this lyric poet’s distinctive voice continues to haunt its readers.
“Ingrid’s Husband showcases Henry’s eye for striking imagery …Ingrid’s Husband succeeds as a powerful meditation on loss, and its tentative, never fully realised, attempts at renewal are always affecting…there’s more than enough fine writing in this volume to reward sustained attention.” – Richard Marggraf Turley, New Welsh Review, Feb 08
“ Henry’s poems work through images deftly juxtaposed; they evoke a world of fleeting memories and echo the processes of intuitive thought…“Paul Henry can be mischievously perceptive of the danger lurking behind appearances.” Poetry Salzburg, April 08
“Paul Henry’s lyrical poems achieve perfect pitch, matching sound to sense with, seemingly a minimum of effort. In Ingrid’s Husband, his fifth collection from Seren, musicality of line is evident throughout.” Alice Kavounas, Poetry Review, April 08
“With the purity of a sixteenth-century poet, Paul Henry lets fall his beautiful lyrics like cloaks in the mud of every day. Effortless epiphanies and images gradually break open, releasing a strange power, a dark ocean of longing and loss. His poetry deepens our perception of the world.” – Hugo Williams
“A poet’s poet, Paul Henry gets maximum effect from minimum language. The ordinary becomes alive with possibility, comic, moving, magical, compassionate. A sense of the music of words combines with an endlessly inventive imagination.” – U.A. Fanthorpe
Available in September 2007
Paul Henry
Described by the late U.A. Fanthorpe as ‘a poet’s poet’ who combines ‘a sense of the music of words with an endlessly inventive imagination’, Paul Henry came to poetry through songwriting. Born in Aberystwyth and now based in Crickhowell, his work has been widely anthologised and regularly appears in journals as diverse as Poetry Wales and The TLS. A popular creative writing tutor, he ran Ledbury Festival’s Poetry Cafe at Hereford’s Courtyard theatre and is a regular tutor at writers’ centres. He’s also taught at the University of South Wales and has guest-edited Poetry Wales.
Mari d’Ingrid, a translation of his fifth book, Ingrid’s Husband (Seren), was published in France by L’Harmattan. His new and selected poems, The Brittle Sea, appeared in 2010. This was followed in 2012 by its Indian version, The Black Guitar. A regular reader and performer at festivals, he has recently written and presented arts programmes for BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. His sixth, Boy Running, was published in February 2015 and was shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year in 2016, and in February 2018 his latest collection, The Glass Aisle, was added to the ranks and even lead to a performance version co-written with fellow musician and songwriter Brian Briggs. They performed it at festivals throughout the summer and there is now a CD available to purchase.
