Flood

by Clare Shaw

The territory of Clare Shaw’s third collection isn’t one she chose herself, but one which chose her: the flooded valley and the ruined home. The 2015 floods in Britain left whole swathes of the country submerged, including her home town. Flood offers an eye-witness account of those events, from rainfall to rescue, but ripples out from there. Intimately interwoven with the breakdown of a relationship, flooding serves as a powerful metaphor for wider experiences of loss, destruction and recovery. Testifying equally to the forces that destroy us and save us, flood runs through the book in different forms – bereavement and trauma, the Savile scandal, life in an asylum. Yet ultimately, this is a story of one life as it is unravelled and rebuilt, written from the heart and from the North, in a language as dangerous and sustaining as water.

Genres: Poetry

95 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 21, 2018

About the author

Clare Shaw was born in Burnley in 1972. Her first two collections were Straight Ahead (2006), which was shortlisted for the Glen Dimplex New Writers’ Award for Poetry and attracted a Forward Prize Highly Commended for Best Single Poem, and Head On (2012), which according to the Times Literary Supplement is 'fierce, memorable and visceral'. Her third collection, Flood, is published by Bloodaxe in June 2018. She is a Royal Literary Fellow, and a regular tutor for the Writing Project, the Poetry School, the Wordsworth Trust and the Arvon Foundation. She also works as a mental health trainer and consultant and has taught and published widely in the field, including Our Encounters with Self-Injury (eds. Baker, Biley and Shaw, PCCS 2013) and Otis Doesn't Scratch (PCCS 2015), a unique storybook resource for children who live with self-injury. Clare lives in Hebden Bridge with her daughter and their two pet rats; she enjoys rock climbing and wild swimming in cold and beautiful places.

Reviews

[Nicke Pearson · Rating 1 out of 5]

My low score on this book of poetry is simply because modern poetry just doesn’t work for me. I could appreciate it’s writing style but the poems were quite repetitive and I found myself just finishing it for the sake of finishing it, not because I enjoyed it.

[Cara L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clare Shaw is an extraordinary poet whose writing makes me feel sorry for people who don't read poetry. I wish I could write like this (actually Clare gives workshops, so you can come close). It took me ages to read this because I had to keep taking photos of pages and sending them to people I loved. I have returned again and again to the comfort of Open Door Policy, but I think my favourite bit of this collection is this bit, in the first poem, What do I know:
I know how stars are made because I made one / and it was a simple matter of asking. / I know sometimes I just have to ask, / the rock will tell me which way to move / and sometimes I do not fall.
🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤

[Bec Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written in response to the floods of Hebden Bridge in 2015 this collection returns to themes around water and flooding. But it's so much more than that. Rooted in time and place, I found it incredibly powerful - and kept returning to lines and images Shaw created.