Author Description

With this new collection of poetry Sheenagh Pugh confirms her place at the forefront of modern British verse. A subtle and adept technique, combined with a sharp wit, keen eye and pointed sense of humour, creates poems of memorable cadence and theme. The title is taken from the remnants of a sign outside a hospital, now closed, that features in the moving reminiscences of an elderly passenger on a bus. Other poems invoke such varied characters as a Welsh pirate, a superb fiddler, a mediaeval woodcarver and Buffalo Bill. The wild and beautiful Shetland Isles provide inspiration for a number of works, including 'Voices in Mousa Broch', 'Sailing to Islands', and 'Under Way'. A final section is devoted to several of the author's noteworthy translations from the German of Andreas Gryphius, Friedrich Von Logau and others. "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 Sheenagh 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.