DEVON HYMNS

¶ Devon Hymns is Jeremy Clarke’s debut poetry collection.

• Written with both wit and a profound sense of time passing, Devon Hymns takes us to what he calls “the great mismatch / of man and field.” A place where the cattle themselves are recognised with a new vision of their existence. Witty and moving, reticent and self-revealing, harsh and lyrical by degrees. ❧ Ronald Blythe

• There is nothing sanctimonious about these hymns. Their sense of the spiritual is lightened and refreshed by a shrewd humour that sees the personality in animals and trees, even inanimate objects, the bull built for war but condemned to a life of lovemaking, the bed’s creak that greets its returning occupant with “Not again, surely?” the “bare trees: / classrooms of arms / raised for ‘who’s cold?’” Clarke’s Zen-like perceptiveness and subtlety are well-matched here by Yves Berger’s startlingly economical line-drawings, in which hand and a hoof are juxtaposed, or a cow’s brindled markings mimic a continental pattern of tectonic plates, and there’s an equally fine cover design, a complex maze of leaves, flowers and faces by John Berger. Overall, this is a beautiful book, and one which proves that pastoral is as rich a poetic theme as ever. ❧ Matthew Francis

¶ Jeremy Clarke was born in Bedfordshire, England and has lived and worked in Canada, America, Europe, the Arctic and the Middle East. He currently lives in London.

¶ He writes: “In the hyperactive urban loud the possibilities of slowness, a sense of the sacred, seem like quaint curiosities or period pieces. They are not. There is a quiet, meticulous, fragile world that co-exists with our own dailiness. We have the capacity for looking and listening to it.”

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