Overview

At the heart of Linda Anderson’s second collection is an exploration of time and of ageing. Time is pressing, urgent, in relation to both the individual and the planet. However, underneath, there is also something unfinished, whether that be in relation to memory’s ability to revise the past and take on different shapes and meanings, or in relation to writing itself which has a materiality which links it to the body of the writer. The collection contains an interrogation of the poet’s notebooks where chance and randomness have an important part to play, forging surprising links, and directing attention to the surrounding bloom of uncertainty, the ‘diaphanous, unwritten poem’ that lurks behind any finished poem. The fragility of the body also undermines certainty, and while much of the collection draws on visual imagery, derived particularly from the natural world, the loss of sight is folded into acts of careful observation, making seeing itself both more problematic and more precious. This collection ranges restlessly across forms and voices connecting the poems to artists, writers, and musicians such as Stanley Spencer, Frédérick Chopin and Elizabeth Bishop. Yet words also repeat across different poems, like musical motifs, forming a fragile net for the collection. There are moments too when silence takes over and we are asked to wait, to discover a different meaning in hesitancy.

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9781805966135

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Reviews

'Linda Anderson summons up a marvellous array of voices to examine ‘ways of seeing, without seeing, /tilting contours of light’. At the same time, she offers her vision of a natural world that feels freshly washed, seen through new eyes. The poems here pay attention to the seemingly ordinary, the overlooked, and elevate it to a praise song that celebrates the earth and it creatures, surrendered ‘to the frantic beat of music - Alive! Alive! - coming from within.' Imtiaz Dharker 'What a title for a second book. Against Falling. There is quantum thinking in it. Resistance to some force and a hint of surrender at the inevitable movement of decline, perhaps even of time. The fall is not from grace, since poetry is at stake, but with grace. The essayistic feel of the Notebook pieces in this collection insist on poetry as shapeshifting, as alive in philosophy as much as in prose and with a contemplative edge which the more recognizable forms of poetry might hide… For those who love the materiality of the book then it is a shot of joy to see a page from the Notebook that declares “all the best poems are hidden”. And where the dream life is a repository of poetry.' Fred D’Aguiar 'Linda Anderson’s inquiries into perception and presence, fragmentation and flux are multi-faceted and numinous, conjuring a wide-open sense of groundlessness at once awful and exhilarating. The subtly intimate poems in Against Falling reckon with paradox and face darkness down with the clear light of not-knowing, making way for glimpses of tender transcendence – ‘the lost and the found together’.' Linda France

Author Information

Linda Anderson is Emeritus Professor of English at Newcastle University where she founded the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts (2009) and the annual Newcastle Poetry Festival. She has written extensively about autobiography and feminist theory but more recently has published widely on Elizabeth Bishop, including the monograph, Elizabeth Bishop: Lines of Connection (Edinburgh University Press 2013), and has co-edited a collection of essays on poetry archives, The Contemporary Poetry Archive: Essays and Interventions (Edinburgh University Press, 2019), Originally from Scotland, she was an editor of Writing Women for many years, has worked to establish innovative poetry archives at Newcastle University, including the Bloodaxe Archive (http://bloodaxe.ncl.ac.uk) and has published a poetry pamphlet, Greenhouse, with Mariscat Press, 2013. She is currently Chair of Bloodaxe Books. Her first poetry collection, The Station Before (2020) was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney first collection prize.

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