Highly Commended in the Forward Prizes for Poetry 2014
“In this scrupulously unsentimental collection, full of crisp, lucent imagery, the reader is transported to exquisitely rendered physical and emotional landscapes. Fully engaged with the material world, these poems interrogate memory and family mythology to reveal the darkness beneath luminous surfaces. Reading these poems – many of which engage with water – I felt that I was watching dazzling tropical fish dart across a tank.”
Catherine Smith
“‘Aren’t there laws against letters as young/as this travelling on their own by air?’ asks the poet in ‘Enda’s Letter’. Missives, communications (including the extraordinary ‘The White Valentine’, a Valentine like no other), together with a sense of place and history inform these beautifully constructed poems. Almost by stealth, Mary Woodward gives us poems which surprise and reverberate, again and again.”
Julian Stannard