Synopsis
Adrian Blamires was born in Cornwall and now lives in Reading, working as a teacher. This is his first collection. "Here is a collection that demands and repays re-reading. Moving and aesthetically rewarding, the poems are informed by a deeply compassionate intelligence and shaped by a thoughtful yet unobtrusive craft. The haunting presence in these poems is the history of human nature – timeless, yet driven and defined by time’s passage; universal, yet inescapably relevant to private individual conscience. In addition to the uncharted watersheds of our private histories, Adrian Blamires draws unostentatiously on a knowledge and love of Greek myth, history, and English literature to make poems of acute contemporary relevance, in a language at once lyrical and demotic. In this lucid and deeply humane first collection, with its incontrovertible ‘clarity of loss’. Blamires offers us poem after poem as individual acts of restitution." Elizabeth Garret The Effect of Coastal Processes on the Beach at Amroth We blew into our hands for warmth, With calipers and a hypothesis Measuring the size and roundness Of pebbles, the effect of coastal processes. The set of results confounded us. Maybe there’d been a recent storm: The size of pebbles did not diminish In the direction of longshore drift, Not according to our sample. There must’ve been a shift In the prevailing wind. It’s simple, He explained to his girlfriend, we’re in this Together – she was eight days late – But as they sat at the high tide Mark, watching the swash and backwash, Waves of attrition, a multitude Of tiny cuffing knocks, the fact was That in the fading daylight Hushed and rocked she’d reached a decision, Calm, before a sea of troubles. In my palm’s a small flat stone: The flints we skim return as pebbles. Of the beach at Amroth’s population Would anyone ever miss this one?
Careless reviewer that I am, my earlier contribution shows that not only had I not kept up with the calender, but I confused Claude with Poussin. Well, their effect on me is much the same and as little. The point of publishing this correction is also to show that I have already been back to Adrian Blamires' admirable collection and re-read it.
Arthur Arnold
I heard the title poem read on Radio4 Poetry Please and was immediately impressed by the unusual subject, its subtle rhyming scheme and the openendedness of the poem's narrative. I listened to it again (on Listen Again!) and my appreciation was further enhanced so I immediately ordered it from my local (independant) bookseller. I have since enjoyed and admired the remaining poems in the selection (with the exception of those about Claude's paintings - but that's because I just dont 'get' Claude so I can't understand what motivates a poem about his work).Every year I discover a new poet; last year it was Meg Peacocke, the year before that it was Tiffany Atkinson. January is early to say it, but I think Adrian Blamires is very likely to be my discovery for 2008.
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