Swerve
Julith Jedamus writes with an intensity that is at once passionate and precise. The poems in "The Swerve" create unforgettable landscapes: the whorls and spires of juniper in falling snow, Dutch skies of iridescent grey and lilac, the fire-scorched mountains of the American West. They are peopled by dancers and prisoners, sacrificial children and murderous wives; they reshape the imagination. We see the Netherlands in Van Gogh's colours as he walks and works, breathing the twilight, and the Thames in Whistler's; Lorca and Euripides are living presences. The timeless dramas of sacrifice and mourning, rescue and betrayal are re-enacted, meanings dissolved and remade. Long-vanished children walk home through the dark, "ghosting a path of sparks".
Like the scull she rows on the Thames, Julith Jedamus's poems skim "the fine line / between flying and drowning", "unstable as air", dangerous, alive.
Like the scull she rows on the Thames, Julith Jedamus's poems skim "the fine line / between flying and drowning", "unstable as air", dangerous, alive.
About the author
Julith Jedamus grew up in the mountains west of Boulder, Colorado. For the past sixteen years she has lived in London. She began writing novels, switched to short stories, and now writes verse, some of which was anthologised in the bestselling "New Poetries V". Her first collection, "The Swerve", will be published by Carcanet in 2012.