Overview

A dreamlike, unsettling portrait of a riverside village in the heart of rural England Highway Cottage weaves the story of a strange homecoming. A young poet travels to the heart of the English countryside - back to the West Country village where he grew up. Descending into the valley where the small riverside community still resides, he finds himself within a dreamlike landscape, peopled by uncanny figures- drone operators and hunters; half-familiar friends; local historians, and braying councillors trying desperately to oust a community of Travellers. Hovering between reality and folklore, the locale is at once idyllic and in decay; the visitor is both unsettled and soothed by it. Slowly, we start to sense that both villagers and poet might be under threat - not just from the future, but from the past. This book-length sequence of poems represents a ground-breaking artistic achievement by acclaimed poet Ralf Webb. Blending the eerie musicality of children's rhymes with echoes of traditional balladry and free verse, the collection swells to an extraordinary chorus. With great clarity and affection, but not a trace of sentimentality, Webb conjures a precise vision of a rural community, surfacing the deep and urgent tensions - personal, political, and environmental - that run through Britain today. The result is a unique portrait of contemporary country life, enchanting and unnerving in equal measure.

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9781802068924

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Reviews

Stunning … a masterful exploration of the past, the present, the political, and the pastoral in all its spectre -- Rachel Long The poems of Highway Cottage embody the intangibility of return. In their midst, to revisit is always to witness anew and, if fortunate, to be renewed also -- Victoria Adukwei Bulley Praise for Ralf Webb * - * Ralf Webb is an ethnographer of the present. He is interested in everyday life in the extreme -- Peter Gizzi Never less than razor-sharp. With a storyteller's flair, he evokes a world of shifting terrains … It all feels gloriously, anarchically new -- Julia Copus An important voice in British poetry -- Eley Williams This is close-range language, magnifying without prejudice both the beautiful and the hard -- Anne Boyer

Stunning … a masterful exploration of the past, the present, the political, and the pastoral in all its spectre -- Rachel Long The poems of Highway Cottage embody the intangibility of return. In their midst, to revisit is always to witness anew and, if fortunate, to be renewed also -- Victoria Adukwei Bulley Highway Cottage portrays a landscape of irrepressible beauty and disquiet. It’s a collection attuned to the fields and their secrets, indebted to the rivers and the young swimmers who slip into them. Language blooms, unfurls, the imagery stains everything it touches. Rural life is ripe with tensions, and Webb situates himself at its fringes, guiding, prodding, asking -- Momtaza Mehri Praise for Ralf Webb * - * Ralf Webb is an ethnographer of the present. He is interested in everyday life in the extreme -- Peter Gizzi Never less than razor-sharp. With a storyteller's flair, he evokes a world of shifting terrains … It all feels gloriously, anarchically new -- Julia Copus An important voice in British poetry -- Eley Williams This is close-range language, magnifying without prejudice both the beautiful and the hard -- Anne Boyer

Author Information

Ralf Webb is the author of Rotten Days in Late Summer, which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and the nonfiction book Strange Relations, which was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. His poems, essays, and fiction have appeared widely, including in the London Review of Books, Fantastic Man, Granta and the Guardian. This is his second collection.

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