Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Great Regulars: Her award-winning poetry has touched

on everything from winter to Welsh legend, but now National poet of Wales Gillian Clarke has found a more prosaic muse: John Lewis.

Clarke's poem "Home", written to mark the third anniversary of John Lewis's Cardiff branch, is being displayed in the department store's window, against a backdrop of homewares. Imagining a return home on a dark evening, the poem's protagonist finds the room "dreaming,/in a doze at the end of the day", as "across the evening city home is waking".

from Alison Flood: The Guardian: John Lewis honoured with poem by Gillian Clarke

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Won in the past by Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott and Ted Hughes, last year's prize proved controversial after the shortlisted poets Alice Oswald and John Kinsella both withdrew in protest at the award's new sponsorship by investment management firm Aurum Funds. John Burnside was eventually named winner, and the award continues to be supported by Aurum.

This year, a female-heavy line-up shortlists national poet of Wales Gillian Clarke for Ice, about winter, Jorie Graham for P L A C E, which has just won the Forward prize, and Julia Copus for the highly personal The World's Two Smallest Humans.

from Alison Flood: The Guardian: T.S. Eliot prize for poetry announces 'fresh, bold' shortlist

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