Author Description

The Last Landscape is Miriam Waddington's first book of new poems in a decade. It includes poems about the place of women in our society, the tragedy of war, the comedy of human affairs, memory and isolation, aging and death. Yet it is not a book without hope, for Waddington's voice, at once compassionate and ironic, refuses to accept the defeats it sees as the price of being alive. Sometimes angry, sometimes elegiac, but always observant and just, Waddington writes with characteristic lyricism and intuitive vision. The prophetic darkness of some of her new poems may startle readers familiar with Waddington's work, but there is no loss of joy and humour. Included in this book is her almost ghost story 'Klara and Lilo', a mysterious account of two women known, in passing, at a Mexican resort. Their lives, like the poems in The Last Landscape, will haunt readers long after they have finished reading this powerful collection.