Newlyn, Lucy

Earth’s Almanac

The poems in Newlyn’s book emerged over a fifteen-year period following the untimely death of the poet’s sister. She adapts the form of the ‘Shepherd’s Calendar’ to the phases of grief, condensing a long process of reflection and remembering into the passage of a single year. The poems shift through forms and move between places – Oxford, Borrowdale, and finally Cornwall, where the poet finds a second home near the sea. In these intense expressions of love and loss, anger and guilt, there is no smooth path towards consolation.