The Silence by Gillian Clarke
POETRY BOOK SOCIETY RECOMMENDATION SPRING 2024 Penny Boxall Richly imaginative and intercontinental: the

Richly imaginative and intercontinental: the new poetry collection from the prizewinning poet and translator

these poems convey what it is to be human

It is the life of an immigrant who has been in this country for fifty-odd years

As Audre Lorde writes ‘We survived and survival breeds desire for more self’

The Silence by Gillian Clarke<br><b>POETRY BOOK SOCIETY RECOMMENDATION SPRING 2024</b> Penny Boxall Richly imaginative and intercontinental: the'The days have no names. The day they count the dead,the day they closed the doors,turned off the lights. We're still here in the silence,hearing tree talk,the wind's secrets,the company of birds.' 'The Year of the Dead' The poems in Gillian Clarke's The Silence begin during lockdown, whose silences Clarke listens so attentively that other voices emerge. As the book progresses, that silence deepens, in the poems about her mother and childhood, about