Gallop

Alison Brackenbury's poems are haunted by horses, unseasonable love, history, hares and unreasonable hope. Brackenbury's Selected Poems begins in the almost Victorian villages of remote Lincolnshire, where her father tramped, as a ploughboy, behind great Shires and Percherons. Her acclaimed early poem, ‘Dreams of Power’, gives voice to a little-known woman from the past, Arbella Stuart, and her still-contemporary choices: safe solitude, fashionable London, dangerous love.

Her song-like poems draw on years of experience of bookkeeping and manual work in industry, of VAT, of trichloroethylene on ‘a thrumming lorry’. The poems take readers to northern China winters and the damp heat of Hanoi. And always the countryside returns: its mud, its huge hares, its stubborn sun. After nine books, major prizes and national broadcasts, the rush of Brackenbury's poems are a work in wonderful progress, full of surprises and renewals.

About the Author

Alison Brackenbury was born in Lincolnshire in 1953. She has published nine collections of poetry. Her work has been awarded an Eric Gregory Award and a Cholmondeley Award by the Society of Authors. For over thirty years, her poems have appeared in Britain’s major poetry journals. She also reviews poetry for a wide range of publications. Her work has frequently been featured on BBC Radio, and she has written six full-length radio features. She contributes regularly to Radio 4’s arts programme, ‘Front Row’, and has recently read her work live on Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme.