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All fours

Nia Davies author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Bloodaxe Books Ltd

Published:22nd Jun '17

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All fours cover

Bodies. Rhythms. Motion. Sounds. All Fours is a debut collection of poetry from Nia Davies, a book of rituals in language that stalk the space between what is uttered and what is meant. These poems are haunted by the strange traces of the longest words in the world and folk-mythic figures such as Sinbad, Eurydice, Mossy Coat, Pan and Baba Yaga. They pose riddles with multiple or mysterious answers. A swerving sweary jump into a terrain that is both comically musical and perplexedly political, All Fours speaks of the (mis)adventures of sex and human communication, a life full-to-bursting with burning questions. All fours was longlisted for the 2019 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize and shortlisted for the Roland Mathias Poetry Award 2018 (Wales Book of the Year Awards).

'Nia Davies's poems are sharply attentive to the realm of the 'inner ear', a meeting point of external and internal environments. The lines have their own intense music, but instead of approaching song's recognition and resolution they push towards the unfamiliar. Archaeologies and soundscapes are carefully excavated in language that sparks at every turn, while multiple directions open for the reader and 'choice is a parallelogram / best made on the slant".' -Zoe Skoulding; 'Nia Davies writes rich and adventurous poems. Her work feels borderless, influenced by experimental American and eastern European poetries. In the event that an "I" surfaces in her work, it is defiantly plastic and multivalent.' - Dai George

ISBN: 9781780373645

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

80 pages