An Anniversary of Flight
by Patrick Lodge
'He stepped out into the deserted road ... and opened his palms to the darkness.'
Patrick Lodge is a keen traveller. This is not, though, a book of travel poems; in his first collection, the Yorkshire- based poet uses the dislocation produced by travel to reflect his own displacements of growing up, family life and adult relationships – his own search for a “home” that might be lived in comfortably and at ease.
His prizewinning poems – which have been published in magazines and anthologies in England, Wales, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and the USA – are enjoyable for their relish of language and their generous sense of what poetry can accommodate and achieve. The great subject of this collection is memory; in service of this, the author displays a masterful ability to step backwards and forwards across the world, and through history. As we journey from Australia to Ireland to Italy, from the late 19th century to the 1950s and into the present, Patrick and the reader are brought back time and again to the only question that matters – how am I different from when I started off?
"Patrick is a poetic craftsman. Whether memory or observation, in poem after poem we find skilful language and imagery that stays in the mind. An excellent first collection and well worth a place on the discerning reader's bookshelf."
— Graham Rippon, Carillon
"The images in this impressive first collection sneak up suddenly on the reader, a sudden recognition of something familiar, seen in a new way, viewed from a different angle ... Highly recommended."
— John Murphy, The Lake
"Patrick Lodge is a poet who is never trivial or merely fashionable. His work is distinguished by its plenitude, depth, and truth to experience."
— David Cooke, The North
"There are poems here to engage as well as to admire. Achingly descriptive, his subject matter various - the past, other places, other poets ... Some poems are right in every word ... so very well told."
— Sam Smith, The Journal
Edition: Paperback
Date Published: 2013-10-03
ISBN: 9781908853301
Catalogue Number: VP0047
Number of Pages: 58
Cover design by Jamie McGarry
Cover illustration by Jane Poulton
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