Ground Water
Bloodaxe Books
Paperback, 64 pages (29 January 2004) ISBN: 185224657X Ebook (27 March 2014) ISBN: 9781780371443 |
Shortlisted for Whitbread Poetry Award
Shortlisted for Guardian First Book Award Shortlisted for Forward Prize for Best First Collection Poetry Book Society Recommendation A Book of the Year Independent, Independent on Sunday and Spectator |
In this sparkling debut, Matthew Hollis immerses us in the undercurrents of our lives. Love and loss are buoyed by a house full of milk, an orchard underwater, the laws of walking on water. Rainwater, floodwater, flux – the liquid landscapes which shift relentlessly in Ground Water – threaten and comfort by turns.
Matthew Hollis’s poems are brimming with courage in adversity as well as the promise of renewal, culminating in a powerful sequence about his father’s struggle with terminal illness. Ground Water is a startling first collection from a remarkable new poet.
Matthew Hollis’s poems are brimming with courage in adversity as well as the promise of renewal, culminating in a powerful sequence about his father’s struggle with terminal illness. Ground Water is a startling first collection from a remarkable new poet.
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Reviews.
‘Matthew Hollis’s first collection of poems introduces us to his wonderfully elegant and assured voice. Comforting and enlightening by turn, these poems deal with some conventional issues of love and loss with a beauty and fluidity rare in young poets.’
– Whitbread Poetry Award judges
‘Matthew Hollis has put together a debut collection of striking accomplishment and emotional range.’
– Guardian
‘The most interesting book of poems I read this year was Matthew Hollis’s Ground Water, a debut collection full of quietly evocative meditations on landscape and loss.’
– D. J. Taylor, The Spectator, Books of the Year
‘Affecting, redolent with sorrow but resolutely tough-minded.’
– David Harsent, Poetry Book Society Bulletin
‘Matthew Hollis shows an impressive confidence in the promptings of the imagination and no desire at all to ingratiate himself. Craft, not attitude, is what counts. Poems are sometimes called “quiet” when really they’re inaudible. His are genuinely quiet, drawing in the ear to enjoy, for example, his artful rendering in slowed folk-song rhythm of the terror and excitement of floods.’
– Sean O’Brien, Sunday Times
‘Hollis is a lyric poet, quietly musical, ever thoughtful.’
– Roddy Lumsden, Poetry London
‘Hollis’s language is often scrupulous and surprising: he relishes the words as he puts them down, without preening.’
– Anthony Thwaite, Daily Telegraph
‘Ground Water is never sentimental, a tribute to the author’s attention to the way in which he makes the language of his poetry an event in itself [. . .] it announces Matthew Hollis as a fascinating prospect.’
– Stephen Knight, Times Literary Supplement
‘Also impressive is Matthew Hollis’s Ground Water, which draws on the flat, watery landscape of East Anglia to produce elegant poems of love and loss.’
– Christina Patterson, Independent, Books of the Year
Media.
Extracts from an recording, made by the Poetry Archive on 21 January 2008, are available here.
