This poetry book is beautifully collaborated. Published this year by Hedgehog Press, the cover and interior photographs are also by Anne McMaster. Nature is very much the heart of this book of poetry.
Working on the farm as a young child and then much later in life as a mature woman, Anne looks at how much life on a small rural Ulster farm has changed drastically over the years. This book Walking Off The Land is in memory of Anne’s parent’s Jeannie Workman McMaster 1920-1994 and William Robert (Wilbert) McMasster 1918-1995.
‘Summer Haiku’ is short and sweet.
Summer morning light
will slip, like the finest yarn,
through the tightest grip.”
‘Song’
Pick each bud
like a note from
the blossoming hedge,
and welcome
the chorus of Spring.”
‘Burial of the Farmdog’, choked me up, as a huge animal lover, as did ‘Cat, (for Odie)’, both written with such tenderness.
‘Everything, it seems, Contains Songs’ is cleverly written, interlacing the link between music and the universe.
..electromagnetic songs of nameless moons…”
‘Notes of a Year’ is a calendar poem about the changing seasons going from one month into the next. There is a verse for every month and every verse starts with the month’s heading.
December:
December days are empty of leaf and light and song. We must seek our winter fire in the heart, the hearth, the sky.”
I particularly love her poem ‘The Page’, as I am a writer myself, and adore the simplicity of ‘Stars’ and ‘Dreams’.
Anne has been published in the UK and US and can be found on Facebook at Annie Rose, Twitter @Rosehill_girl and Instagram @rosehillfarmergirl
(c) Grace O’Reilly
Order your copy online here.
