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9%OFFNeil Powell - Proof of Identity - 9781847770950 - V9781847770950
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Proof of Identity

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Description for Proof of Identity Paperback. Neil Powell's seventh Carcanet collection explores the deep roots of identity: family histories we inherit, memories we carry, the casual decisions and wrong turnings that add up to make us who we are. Meditative, wry, melancholy and celebratory, this is Neil Powell is at his most versatile and memorable. Num Pages: 68 pages. BIC Classification: DCF. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 214 x 134 x 6. Weight in Grams: 98.
Neil Powell's seventh Carcanet collection explores the deep roots of identity: family histories we inherit, memories we carry, the casual decisions and wrong turnings that add up to make us who we are. 'Do you mean to say you've married / an apprentice fitter and come all this way?' an official asks the poet's grandmother who, trusting to luck, emigrates to a new life in South Africa after the First World War. An ironic and grateful presence, Powell observes the lives that he inherits. Perspectives shift with time: an old photograph shows his mother 'more beautiful and happier than I remember her', his father 'looking for once the statesman he should have been'. At the heart of the book is a compelling narrative based on a journal kept by Powell's grandmother of her life in South Africa: a feckless husband, a 483-mile trek with horse and covered wagon, violence and poverty. There's also a shorter, teasingly fictional narrative and a sequence about the life of a grand piano. Other poems deal with childhood, leaving home and first love; a park in Kent and a wood in Suffolk; an old photograph of the Strand and Louis Armstrong's first solo; the London bombers of 2005; and, finally, two old friends recalled in very different elegies. Meditative, wry, melancholy and celebratory, this is Neil Powell is at his most versatile and memorable.

Product Details

Format
Paperback
Publication date
2012
Publisher
Carcanet Press Ltd United Kingdom
Number of pages
88
Condition
New
Place of Publication
Manchester, United Kingdom
ISBN
9781847770950
SKU
V9781847770950
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 15 to 20 working days
Ref
99-44

About Neil Powell
Neil Powell was born in London in 1948 and educated at Sevenoaks School and the University of Warwick. He has taught English, owned a bookshop and, since 1990, been a full-time author and editor. His books include seven collections of poetry - At the Edge (1977), A Season of Calm Weather (1982), True Colours (1990), The Stones on Thorpeness Beach (1994), Selected Poems (1998), A Halfway House (2004) and Proof of Identity (2012) - as well as Carpenters of Light (1979), Roy Fuller: Writer and Society (1995), The Language of Jazz (1997), all published by Carcanet Press, and George Crabbe: An English Life (Pimlico, 2004) and Amis & Son: Two Literary Generations (Macmillan, 2008). His centenary life of Benjamin Britten will be published by Hutchinson in 2013. He lives in Orford, Suffolk.

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