Sheenagh Pugh

A fascination for history, both as a source of human drama and a field for artful speculation, characterises this collection of poems by Sheenagh Pugh. Here we are with the rebels who sack the Palace of Savoy or inside the head of the disturbed King of France, who was convinced he was made of glass, or with the Bishop Thorlack, blessing a demon-haunted cliff. We are as much taken with the gaps in the chronicles, the elisions, the rumours, as we are with the relics: stone ruins, statues plagued by seagulls, the Maid of Norway in a stained-glass window. Primarily about people, this collection is also steeped in northern weathers and waters of the Scottish Isles, where Pugh now lives. The title poem refers to the abrupt darkness in winter afternoons, but also to a theme of timelessness running through the collection.In Afternoons Go Nowhere the past seems more relevant to the present than ever, human nature never entirely predictable and often non-sensical, the natural world seeming full of a paradoxical beauty. There is also a piece entirely sympathetic to the digital new age where people in a ‘Bus Station’ are seen staring at their phones, the poem sings praises of connectivity in an otherwise dull context. Complex but with clear themes and lucid, musical language, Sheenagh Pugh’s tenth collection will delight discriminating readers.

In this, her twelfth collection, noted poet Sheenagh Pugh steps into a new, northern landscape, the Shetland Islands, and her poems are steeped in the wilder weathers and views of rugged coastlines, sweeping sea-vistas and the hardy historical characters who have inhabited these lands. A poet who considers 'too accessible' to be the best sort of compliment, Sheenagh Pugh's work has as much to offer the general reader as it does to the specialist, who will admire her artful use of traditional forms.Sheenagh Pugh is a poet, novelist, translator, critic, reviewer and considerable online presence. She has published nine collections of poetry and both a Selected and a Later Selected Poems. She has won many prizes including the Forward Prize for best single poem, the Bridport Prize, the PHRAS prize, the Cardiff International Poetry Prize (twice) and the British Comparative Literature Association's Translations Prize.

A poet renowned for the clarity of her style, the originality of her subject matter, and for her erudite and spiky online presence, Sheenagh Pugh is a poet at the heighth of her career. This book is a companion to her popular earlier Selected Poems, originally published in 1990 and now a GCSE set text. This volume collects a wide selection of the later poems of Sheenagh Pugh, from five individual collections: Sing for the Taxman (1993), Id's Hospit (1997), Stonelight (1999), The Beautiful Lie (2002), and The Movement of Bodies(2005). A sample of titles will tempt the reader to find out about 'The Last Wolf in Scotland', 'The Tormented Censor', why 'Captain Roberts Goes Looting', who the 'Best Jesus in Show' is, and why we are 'Envying Owen Beattie'. Themes are often subverted, truisms reversed, cliches overthrown. Her technique is highly skilled, but unobtrusive, and therefore, in the best sense, invisible. She frequently uses traditional metre and cleverly deploys rhyme and half-rhyme. The tone is always un-strident, apt and subtly persuasive. This collection highlights the ambitious sequences that have featured in the last decade of the poet's work. A day mountain climbing inspires the three-part pastoral 'Climbing Hermaness' which opens the book, we also have 'Five Voices' which, charac teristically, dramatises an otherwise curious and obscure historical anecdote about the tragic execution of Lieutenant Hans Hermann von Kattte in 1730. 'Voices in Mousa Broch' is an atmospheric four-part sequence about the Shetland Isles. 'The Arctic Chart' describes the icy landscapes of the North and the aftermath of the often tragic expeditions to explore the polar region is embodied in the moving 'Lady Franklin's Man' series, where the eponymous heroine is seen searching for many years for her lost explorer spouse. The final sequence, 'The Curious Drawer' is altogether different and might be called a series of erotic meditations on the miniature Tudor portraits of Nicholas Hilliard.

Some of the journeys in this collection can be found on maps. But some travellers are journeying from one self to another, like those strange adventurers Murat Reis and Tristan Jones. Some, like Adwaitya the tortoise, have traversed time as well as space. Some travel in dreams. And the longest-haul travellers of all are the dead, like Josephine, whose memory returns to haunt our consciousness and remind us that not all places can be found in the atlas. Elisions, displacements, journeys, memories of journeys, dreams: this new collection of poems by Sheenagh Pugh has a pervasive elegiac quality. Known for her incisive narratives, many of these new poems work more by implication than explication. She uses a shorter line, briefer description and when there is dialogue it is often minimalist, oblique, refracted through camera or computer or telephone line. A typical protagonist is a bearded, anonymous elderly gentleman struck by a tram, carrying no papers, never named, only visible through the reported details that slowly resolve into a biography that we might come to recognise as a famous architect. Another typical poem is 'The Unconversations' which is a beautiful paean to the shorthand of private references used by a long-married couple. 'Murat Reis' features the fractured life of a pirate, privateer, merchantman or mere explorer according to the multiple identities assumed and assayed in this poem, the various sections of which switch line lengths and rhythms. History provides encapsulated stories: such as in 'Victor' which mourns the life of a young, freed slave in Roman Times, implied from the illustrations on his gravestone. 'Webcam Sonnets' capture the subtle, sometimes poignant, sometimes sad, illusion of intimacy givenvia webcam contacts.

Fanfic is the fastest-growing form of writing in the world. Working in 'fandoms' anonymous authors bring their own gloss and invention to novels, films and TV series, developing characters, expanding narratives and, in the 'slash' genre, boldly going where the conventional genre writers fear to tread in relationships.In The Democratic Genre poet Sheenagh Pugh explores fandoms as diverse as Jane Austen, Blake's 7 and The Bill. She discusses fanfic terminology, its mechanisms for participation and support, the differences with conventional publishing and, for the first time, the literary standing of the writing.Fanfic is now an established cultural phenomenon - this book is its essential guide.Poet and novelist Sheenagh Pugh teaches creative writing at the University of Glamorgan. Her most recent poetry collection is The Movement of Bodies (2005). It succeeds The Beautiful Lie, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize.

A strange assortment of characters inhabit these poems, including George Mackay Brown, Johnny Cash, William Dampier, a lion-keeper in wartime Afganistan, and a shipload of sailors in a Shetland churchyard. The long central work of the collection provides an elegiac meditation on the life and death of a young soldier who succumbed to hypothermia during the Napoleonic Wars. Finally, and quite unexpectedly, the poem "Googlisms" provides an outpouring of quirky definitions from a website that collects information from the search engine Google.

Sheenagh Pugh's poems continue to entertain and delight her many admirers. In Stonelight, her ninth collection, the keynote is celebration. The opening section includes a moving series called 'Arctic Chart' which commemorates the various people (and one ship) who gave their names to features on the Arctic map. Also here is 'Envying Owen Beattie' (winner of the Forward Prize for Best Poem of 1998), where the discovery of a frozen explorer under permafrost inspires some unusual thoughts. The middle section, including 'The Faithful Wife', makes up a sequence of persona poems in the character of a middle-aged woman in love with a young man. Other poems deal with what Sheenagh Pugh calls "the usual suspects: Shetland, Cardiff, mortality, slightly weird and misplaced people." There are also more of the poet's fine translations from the French and German."Sheenagh Pugh's work's accessibility is a feature of the clarity and inevitability with which she can pursue intuitions into territories of luminous significance."Poetry Review"Savour the richness of this collection: here is a poet who plays with words seriously and light-heartedly to build fine bridges between the external world and the inner world of imagination." Poetry MonthlySheenagh Pugh is known to thousands of poetry readers for 'Sometimes', her much anthologised 'poem on the underground' and for her Selected Poems, a set text in schools. She currently lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Glamorgan, and has won numerous prizes for her work, including the Babel Prize for translation and the ACW Book of the Year in 2000.

Her characteristic wit and precision are fully in evidence in Sheenagh Pugh's latest collection of poems, Sing for the Taxman. Dedicated to the proposition that poetry must, first of all, entertain the reader, these poems give delight on first reading and pleasure upon contemplation. A day mountain climbing inspires the beautiful three-part pastoral 'Climbing Hermaness', that opens the book. In 'Five Voices', we learn about the strange and tragic execution of Lieutenant Hans Hermann von Katte in 1730, through the dramatic confessions of his intimates. Later we meet, among others, 'Mozart Playing Billiards', 'The Last Wolf in Scotland', and Guy Fawkes' girlfriend ('Remember, Remember'). Half a dozen of Sheenagh Pugh's excellent translations from the poetry of Jammes, Holty, Von Hofmannswaldau and others, round off this thoroughly enjoyable collection."This one I got hooked on from the minute I plunged into the first poem…"Poetry Review"... among the top two or three poets of her generation writing English poetry in Wales"Poetry WalesSheenagh Pugh is known to thousands of poetry readers for 'Sometimes', her much anthologised 'poem on the underground' and for her Selected Poems, a set text in schools. She currently lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Glamorgan, and has won numerous prizes for her work, including the Babel Prize for translation and the ACW Book of the Year in 2000.

A falling tortoise is a bizarre way to meet one's end, but it is typical of Sheenagh Pugh's wry humour that it finds a place in her poetry. The more humorous aspects of mortality and human frailty receive the same alert consideration as sombre subjects such as dictatorship, torture, the Dieppe raid and pollution. Whether describing the significance of the maximum break in snooker or exploring the mind of a Nazi, Sheenagh Pugh's individual voice resonates throughout her finely crafted poetry."Sheenagh Pugh's work's accessibility is a feature of the clarity and inevitability with which she can pursue intuitions into territories of luminous significance." Poetry Review"Sheenagh Pugh is a remarkable, sometimes brilliant poet. Her great gifts are accessibility, wit, subtle rhyme schemes and the power to illuminate half-forgotten corners of history" Merryn Williams "... among the top two or three poets of her generation writing English poetry in Wales" Poetry WalesSheenagh Pugh is known to thousands of poetry readers for 'Sometimes', her much anthologised 'poem on the underground' and for her Selected Poems, a set text in schools. She currently lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Glamorgan, and has won numerous prizes for her work, including the Babel Prize for translation and the ACW Book of the Year in 2000.