The Catch

by Fiona Sampson

Fiona Sampson’s latest collection transforms the sensory world into an astonishingly new and vivid poetry. Here, dream and myth, creatures real and imagined, and the sights and sounds of ‘distance and of home’ all coalesce in a sustained meditation on time and belonging. Combining formal sophistication with metaphysical exploration, this is an incandescent work of renewal, beauty and risk.

Genres: Poetry

Kindle Edition

First published February 4, 2016

About the author

Fiona Ruth Sampson, MBE is an English poet and writer. She is published in thirty-seven languages and has received a number of national and international awards for her writing.

Sampson was educated at the Royal Academy of Music, and following a brief career as a concert violinist, studied at Oxford University, where she won the Newdigate Prize. She gained a PhD in the philosophy of language from Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. She advises internationally on creative writing in healthcare, a field whose development she pioneered in a number of projects and publications. As a young poet she was the founder-director of Poetryfest – the Aberystwyth International Poetry Festival and the founding editor of Orient Express, a journal of contemporary writing from Europe. She has received a number of international writers' fellowships: I.A. Literary Association, Skojcan, Slovenia, 2015, Greek Writers’ Union Writers’ and Translators’ House, Paros, 2011, Estonian Writers’ Union House, Kasmu, 2009, Heinrich Boll House, Achill Island, 2005, Fundacion Valparaiso, Spain, 2002, Hawthornden Castle, 2001, Fondacion da Casa de Mateus, Portugal, 2001. She held an Arts and Humanities Research Council Fellowship at Oxford Brookes University 2002-5, a CAPITAL Fellowship in Creativity at the University of Warwick 2007-8 and a Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, Institute of Musical Research & Institute of English Studies: 2012-15.

From 2005-12, Sampson was the editor of Poetry Review, the oldest and most widely read poetry journal in the UK. She was the first woman editor of the journal since Muriel Spark (1947–49). In January 2013 she founded Poem, a quarterly international review, published by the University of Roehampton, where Sampson is Professor of Poetry and the Director of Roehampton Poetry Centre.

She lives in Herefordshire.

Reviews

[Pascale Petit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fiona Sampson, in 'The Catch', does that rare thing of capturing happiness – short sharp bursts of it in jewel-like poems. Even moments such as a visit to the dentist are occasions for seeing the joy beyond pain, though many of these concentrated verses celebrate the natural world, catching it even as it flies away. Happiness usually “writes white” but in this volume it writes in glorious colour. This is partly achieved through lucid images and exhilarating lines that catch the breath, but also through musicality – Sampson was a concert violinist before becoming a poet, her lines are taut as a violin’s strings.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

I actually read a paperback copy of this collection, not an e-book, which is published by Chatto Poetry. It has a stunning cover, which is what attracted me to it in the bookshop. I adore this collection. The images and atmospheres Fiona Sampson creates is beautiful. She doesn't use overly flouncy language either. I love the dream-like quality a lot of these poems have, so that you are left feeling off balance and unsure, just like waking up from a vivid dream. This collection is all about the senses, and, to be a bit cheesy here, it is a feast for them! I will definitely be finding more of Sampson's work.

[Astrid · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is nice. A refreshingly sensual quality to it. These poems have tastes, smells and textures that rasp one's spine.

[Josiah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful poetry, haunted by nature, moving, at times gentle, at times as rough as treebark.

[Tilly Norster · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the poems but none stuck out to me