Blackbird Singing at Dusk

'Here is marvellous poetry that explores deep history and loss; here is the echoing power of boulders and fields shaped into shining stanzas on page after page. And here is the tight redemptive language of anger and memory.'

-- Ian McMillan

‘Wendy Pratt's Blackbird Singing at Dusk is a beautiful, cerebral book. Here are dream-scenarios, misty communication with those lost, hints and whispers of otherworldly things. Time wide-ranges through these intelligent, brilliantly structured poems – an expanse of ages transports us from glacier to vanished lake to train tracks. Here are the tellings and restorations of stories of blood and bone, of “the isotopes that sit in the teeth”, of past, present and future selves, of Pratt’s explorations of what makes her her, what makes us us. Here is pain framed in so many amazing ways. This book will absorb your heart, mind and soul. Each poem will enter you like a dart.’

-- Jane Burn

‘Blackbird Singing at Dusk takes us on a journey into radiant, storied, living landscapes. Step into valleys threaded through with the voices of wrens and the blackbird’s music, where the ‘lake people’ have left their prehistoric traces. Wendy Pratt’s archaeological poems and pride in her working-class roots nod to Seamus Heaney, while celebrating the mother-tongue of strong women who have worked the land. These haunting poems will linger long in your memory.’

-- Yvonne Red