Earthshine

by Mimi Khalvati

'Written around the time of my mother’s death, these poems take the day’s weather as a starting-point before spinning off in their own directions. They express the effects of weather on my mood and imagination and a desire to reconnect with the animal self — several are about small creatures, mostly real, some imaginary. The only person, apart from the speaker, that appears in these poems is the figure of my mother. Her absence, echoing her absence in my childhood, seems now, as then, to have intensified my relationship with the natural world — the huge presences of sky, stars, sun, moon, and the smaller presences of flora and fauna. By way of elegising my mother’s death, I celebrate these living companions. Although they have a sad undertow, I hope the poems are light and playful without denying the dark and dangers in the wider world.' — Mimi Khalvati, 2013

34 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2013

About the author

Mimi Khalvati was born in Tehran, Iran. She grew up on the Isle of Wight, where she attended boarding school from the age of six, and has lived most of her life in England. She trained at Drama Centre London and has worked as an actor and director in the UK and Iran.

She has published eight collections of poetry with Carcanet Press, including The Weather Wheel, The Meanest Flower, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, a Financial Times Book of the Year, and shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and, most recently, Child: New and Selected Poems 1991-2011, a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. Her work has been translated into nine languages and she received a Cholmondeley Award in 2006. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Mimi is the founder of The Poetry School and was the Coordinator from 1997–2004. She is a core tutor for the School and has co-edited its three anthologies of new writing published by Enitharmon Press.

She is also a freelance poetry tutor and has worked with arts organisations such as the Arvon Foundation and the South Bank Centre and has taught at universities in the UK, Europe and America.