Poetry
Category: Individual Collections, Poetry
Number of pages: 178
ISBN: 9781854115249
Publication date: October 18, 2010
Price: £9.99
“The new, previously unpublished poems…represent the best work of a lyric poet who deserves a wider readership.” – TLS
“This is a beautiful, moving book concerned with a preservation and celebration of the past: poignant, yet unsentimental. It is a must for fans of Henry’s work and a thoughtful selection for readers coming to his poems for the first time.” – New Welsh Review
“I am at a loss to understand why this poet, who not only concerns himself with themes that would resonate with most readers but has the verbal and musical skill to make them resonate, is not more widely known and admired.” – Sheenagh Pugh
This substantial selection from the work of Paul Henry confirms that he has over two decades, been quietly building an oeuvre of beautifully crafted poems. And, by popular request, in the “new poems” section, rugby fans will find the three poems Henry was commissioned to write for BBC2’s ‘Poetry in Motion’, which celebrated the Welsh national rugby team as they prepared for the 2007 rugby world cup. Born in Aberystwyth on the west coast of Wales, into a family of musicians, music pervades his poems on childhood, as do a large cast of aunts, neighbours, friends and relations, many of whom appear in Dylan Thomas-like character sketches. Henry doesn’t pin his characters down but allows them to flourish as archetypes, evokes their history and context with a rare empathy and a lyrical lightness of touch. Some of his earliest portrait-poems are set against the Breconshire villages where Henry lived from his mid teens, a move south to Newport, Gwent, inspires poems about the undulating river Usk and the post-industrial cityscape and its impact on people’s lives. The individual human voice, the ragged vagaries of the heart and soul, the joys and sorrows of family life feature here but this poetry is personal without being confessional, preferring tender observation to sensationalism or didacticism. For a poet well-known for one-page lyrics it is instructive to be reminded or several of his longer sequences, such as those in ‘The Shell House’ which vary in tone per section, much like a concerto or musical piece.
Review from Rogue Strands blog
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.
