Poetry
In Last Poem for Sarah & Other Poems, John Powell Ward, now in the seventh decade of his career, offers memorable work on childhood and recollections of Wales. Most poignant though is his commentary on grief in the titular elegy for his late wife, Sarah.
Last Poem for Sarah contains a sequence of fourteen sonnets of ‘childhood and after’, where intense memories of joy and pain are captured precisely. There are striking stories here, like that of a mother desperately trying to appease and breastfeed her baby on the train. There is the tale of a grammar school teacher who regularly erupted into violence and hit the boys with the lids of their desks, and a vivid portrait of brothers visiting a log cabin in Ontario where ice is ten feet thick.
A sequence of poems about experiences of Wales is rich and well-observed capturing a strong sense of time and place, for example in ‘Toby Jugs in the White Lion at Ferryside Station, Dyfed’. Recollections range around important figures from the Welsh arts like a memorable encounter with R.S.Thomas who is drawn into conversation by the sighting of a chough, or the parable about the house of Welsh architect and painter, Ernest Morgan, a recluse in his lifetime but whose house now brims with tourists.
Altogether, Last Poem for Sarah is a highly satisfying read from a poet with a wealth of recollections from a life well-lived. In the poems looking back at the past, Ward captures nuances and flavours of the twentieth century. With a Wordsworthian appreciation for ‘unremembered acts’ that take on great importance, Ward reaches back into history, childhood, adulthood and loss and sets those memories aflame.
John Powell Ward
John Powell Ward was born in Suffolk and educated at the Universities of Toronto, Cambridge and Wales. Editor of Poetry Wales from 1975 to 1980, he is the author of critical works on Wordsworth and R.S. Thomas among others, and editor of the Border Lines series. He has also published several volumes of poetry. His pamphlet Last Poem for Sarah and Other Poems was published in 2023.
“Last Poem for Sarah is the testament of a thinking heart, articulated with John Powell Ward’s characteristic virtuosity. The poet stands on the brink of total loss, confronting the gravest human questions, and writes with a searing, searching wit that reminded me of the Metaphysical poets. Ward’s most beautiful volume so far.”
Stevie Davies
“Memory, loss and mortality are here in this collection; time, place and love, remembered and rediscovered in the everyday, through visionary writing made with care in every sense of the word. To read John Powell Ward is to hear a clear, humane, inimitable voice; everything, even heartbreak, is contained within the frame of poetic form under the masterly control that has always been a mark of his work. We should listen as we read these insightful poems, and understand their ultimate message: ‘We are projections, surely…’”
Seán Street
“These are heartfelt poems of elegy – for a lost wife, for Wales – that are never sentimental or sententious, but explore, with John Powell Ward’s characteristic articulate, questing intelligence, ‘the art of being alone’.”
Nicholas Murray
Past praise for John Powell Ward:
“In an age when so many poets are scared, in a new Labour way, to do anything but toe the party line, it’s good to have a poet like John Powell Ward, who carries on trying out new things whether they work or not. Poets like him really do keep language shiny.” – Ian Macmillan
“John Powell Ward is one of the most important Welsh poets….by placing everyday things under amazing layers of language the poet stimulates dull minds to look at them afresh…. Selected and New Poems brings together all his best work, and the total effect is stunning”. – Merryn Williams on Genesis
“Addresses the most threatening issues our generation must face – the dying of our planet under the threat of human exploitation – in a voice which combines requiem with wit and technical virtuosity. Wit and humour can, amazingly, mourn; and Ward’s arresting imagery, condensed into every line, enables us to scan the horizons of the tarmacked globe; the blighted rainforests; the rainbow sheen of petrol that ‘pampers’ some as it poisons all”. – Stevie Davies on A Certain Marvellous Thing
“An example of how deceptively simple this spare, moving poetry can be… The poems in Instead of Goodbye deal with death and grief with a simple use of language that requires them to be read over and over again, to reveal their subtlety and depth.” – Jeremy Hooker on Instead of Goodbye
