12th July, 2019

Friday Poem – ‘Buzz Pollination’ by Polly Atkin

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Buzz Pollination’ by Polly Atkin which appears in her debut collection Basic Nest Architecture. 

Last week, it was announced that Basic Nest Architecture is on the 2019 longlist for the Michael Murphy Prize. (Read more here.)

Polly Atkin’s debut poetry collection, Basic Nest Architecture, is complex, vivid and moving. It opens with poems inspired by her home in the Lake District, and the landscape and famous Romantic poets such as Wordsworth and Keats, who have walked there and written about the fells and lakes. Nature is a guiding presence, but the author’s personal story, of enduring a little-known and sometimes debilitating illness, is also the backdrop to this striking poetry. Formally, this work is more akin to the metaphysical poets in its fervent use of metaphor, in its multiple layers of meaning and in its quest for answers to the most pressing questions of mortality.

Basic Nest Architecture is available on the Seren website: £9.99

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