Opening and closing with poems that describe what he calls a river’s “breath”, Mark Roper’s new collection is both a significant development of his work as one of the most admired nature poets of his generation, and at the same time a deeply personal record of the loss of his elderly mother. Roper’s trademark clarity of detail and simple, nuanced diction are brought to bear throughout, and the twin presences of death and life, like all great opposites, become so close to each other as to be inseparable. Spare, lyrical and always tender, A Gather of Shadow is a kind of haunting – not by something that is far away or remote, but by the knowledge that might be said to define us as human.

READ three poems from A Gather of Shadow.

ISBN 978 1 906614 591 Paperback
214x140 mm, 58 pp
September 2012