Description

A Sleepwalk on the Severn is a reflective, book-length poem in several registers, using dramatic dialogue. Ghostly, meditative, and characterized by Alice Oswald’s signature sensitivity to nature, the poem chronicles a night on the Severn Estuary as the moonrise travels through its five stages: new moon, half moon, full moon, no moon, and moon reborn.

Publisher Review

"[Oswald is] a perpetual inspiration." -- James Wood - The New Yorker "[Oswald's work] leaves me shaken and speechless." -- Edward Hirsch "Oswald joins Ciaran Carson, Iain Sinclair, Hughes and ultimately Joyce himself as one of the great celebrants of the genius loci, the spirit of place, or what the Irish call dinnseanchas, lovingly elaborated topographical lore.... Oswald has soul in riverfuls." -- Guardian "Alice Oswald is making a new kind of poetry. There is nothing fancy about it-she is doing the job, simple and enormous, of reworking the model for the twenty-first century." -- Jeanette Winterson "Alice Oswald's poems are vivid and distinct, alert and deeply, physically engaged in the natural world." -- Poetry Daily "Oswald's radiant poetry of remembrance will not be readily forgotten." -- Independent "A sublime poet of the natural world." -- Herald "If there's any justice in the poetry world, the title [poet laureate] should be offered to this gardener-classicist who is bringing the British landscape to life in poetry again." -- Daily Telegraph "You won't experience the full effect of Alice Oswald's poetry unless you read her words aloud-she writes with a mind for sounds, syllables, and the patters of speech, informed and inspired by oral storytelling traditions." -- Bustle