Five Fields

by Gillian Clarke

The poems in Gillian Clarke's Five Fields break new ground. Known as a poet of rural themes and of Wales, in this book she engages with the city in its human and material diversity. Having spent time as Writer in Residence at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, she came into close touch with another kind of music, and with the different spaces it occupies, the different demands it makes on performers and audiences. There are poems from Bosnia, France and the Mediterranean coast, and poems from the landscape we most readily associate with this best-loved of Welsh Wales, its people and its creatures.

Genres: Poetry

87 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Gillian Clarke is one of the central figures in contemporary Welsh poetry, the third to take up the post of National Poet of Wales. Her own poems have achieved widespread critical and popular acclaim (her Selected Poems has gone through seven printings and her work is studied by GCSE and A Level students throughout Britain) but she has also made her cultural mark through her inspirational role as a teacher, as editor of the Anglo-Welsh Review from 1975 - 1984, and as founder and President of Ty Newydd, the writers' centre in North Wales.

Clarke currently runs an organic small-holding in Ceredigion, the Welsh landscape is a shaping force in her work, together with recurrent themes of war, womanhood and the passage of time. Her last three books have all been Poetry Book Society Recommendations.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t read as much poetry as I feel that I should do, and when an artist who follows me on Twitter recommended this poet and my library had a copy, I’d thought that I would have nothing to lose. From what I can gather Clarke usually draws inspiration for her prose from the Welsh landscape and there are elements of this in the collection. However, in here, she has taken a wider brief and looked to the city as an extra source as well as from other countries.

We kept one bottle longer than the rest,
Forgot it in the back of the cupboard,
And found it, tiding up, uncorked it,
And wondered at the taste of shadows in it

There are some lovely poems in here, and I particularly liked The Honey Man, Little Owls, Sloes Light and Seeing Angels. Some of my favourite poems were those touching on the natural world, especially those rooted in her home country. There were others that I liked a lot, but there were a number I found harder to fathom, but that is as much my fault as they do need to be read and read to sink in. There is some lovely prose in here and will definitely be reading more of her work.