The December Poetry Book Group will be meeting via Zoom
Monday, December 15th • 6:30 PM ET / 11:30 PM IST via Zoom
Session open to all: no registration required.
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Things being so urgent, when you
open a book its leaves should take you
back to the forest they came from …
(‘Vestige’)
So opens the first poem in Grace Wells’ The Church of the Love of the World, a book that begs us to “only connect” as it explores our individual roles – and the role of poetry itself – in these troubling times.
At once sure-footed and curious, optimistic and on the brink of despair, as well as stand-out lyric moments, the book features a number of longer poems and sequences, among them the extraordinary ‘She Gathers the Wild Grasses’ which explores our very real dependence on grasses, the evolution of society itself made possible by its contribution. As elsewhere, memory, myth, anecdote and hands-on experience are all woven together to produce, among other things, “my own dough – // something forever illiterate / and welcome / in signing each crust with my mark”.
The Church of the Love of the World is a powerful and passionate new book, confirming the promise of Wells’ previous collection, described in Poetry Ireland Review as “a book that enlarges the possibilities of poetry”.
About the Author
Grace Wells was born in London in 1968 and is now based in Ennistymon, Co. Clare. Nature, spirit of place and ecological concern have been large themes in her writing ever since the publication of her debut children’s novel Gyrfalcon (O’Brien Press, 2002), which won the Eilís Dillon Best Newcomer Award and was an International White Ravens Choice. Her debut poetry collection When God has been Called Away to Greater Things (Dedalus Press, 2010), won the Rupert and Eithne Strong Best First Collection Award, and was shortlisted for the London Festival Fringe New Poetry Award. With her second poetry collection Fur (Dedalus Press, 2015), Wells moved more deeply into eco-poetics and eco-feminism. Many poems for her latest book, The Church of the Love of the World (May, 2022) are accompanied by eco-poetry-films to be found on her website www.gracewellslittlesanctuary.com.
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