Please note: In order to keep Hive up to date and provide users with the best features, we are no longer able to fully support Internet Explorer. The site is still available to you, however some sections of the site may appear broken. We would encourage you to move to a more modern browser like Firefox, Edge or Chrome in order to experience the site fully.

Infragreen, EPUB eBook

Infragreen EPUB

EPUB

Please note: eBooks can only be purchased with a UK issued credit card and all our eBooks (ePub and PDF) are DRM protected.

Description

Perceptive, persuasive and intricately made, the poems of Kate Bingham's third collection, Infragreen, take the reader on a startling and unfamiliar journey through everyday experiences and phenomena.

Her keen eye, reflectiveness and quiet wit endow her subjects with a shimmering freshness.

Set within the four walls of home, on the streets of north London and in the Yorkshire countryside, the poems build out from mundane activities such as taking the pill, traveling a daily bus route and scything thistles.

In Bingham's hands, the familiar sights and hypnotic routines that normally lull the brain into unthinking acquiescence are the starting points for finding new richness in the world around us and our participation in it.

The book contains three sections, each infused by a different season and place, but a spirit of serious play presides throughout.

Contemporary versions of Hardy and Frost, a collage cut from old favourite Christmas carols, and a refleshing of some of English poetry's oldest cliches are part of it, but so too is Bingham's fascination with pattern: the patterning required by some of poetry's stricter traditional forms, and pattern as content, a subject in itself.

Those who know Bingham's earlier work will recognize in this collection her playful, often darkly comic, appreciation of the surreal, which features hearts and hands, feet, and even a pair of shoes with minds and agenda of their own.

Elsewhere, a milk-bottle breathes, a pocket of air turns into a winged creature, flies serenade the poet whose mortal scent has drawn them into her room.

A ballad at the start of the final section tells the story of an artisan paper-maker whose origami creation is so perfect it comes to life, only to be destroyed again by its maker.

But beneath the gently cynical, almost self-deprecating tone lie Infragreen's darker themes: a base note of environmental and existential anxiety in which teasing self-deprecation can mutate into a desire for disembodiment, and a ruthless wishing away of consciousness and self.

Information

Other Formats

Information