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    Earth House
    Earth House
    Earth House
    Ebook112 pages1 hour

    Earth House

    By Matthew Hollis

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    About this ebook

    In Earth House, Matthew Hollis evokes the landscape, language and ecology of the isles of Britain and Ireland to explore how our most intimate moments have resonance in the wider cycle of life. Beginning in the slate waters of the north, the book revolves around the cardinal points and the ancient elements: through the wide skies of the east and the terrain of a southern city, to the embers of places lost to us, to which we can no longer return. 

    What emerges is a moving meditation on time and the transformative phases of nature that calls many forces into its presence – the wisdoms of Anglo-Saxon verse, the metamorphoses of Norse and Celtic myth, the stoicism of classical thought and the far east – unforgettably phrased by a writer who, in the words of the TLS, ‘makes the language of his poetry an event in itself’. Subtly attuned to the rhythms of the turning world, these poems open with the passing of an old life and culminate in the birth of a new one. They bravely work the seam between the present and the past, between destruction and renewal, humanity and our environment, and make Earth House a timeless exploration of our timed encounter with the remarkable lives of our planet.

    Earth House is Matthew Hollis’s long awaited follow up to Ground Water (2004), shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Whitbread Poetry Award. He is the author of Now All Roads Lead to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas and The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem, recipients of the Costa Award for Biography and Sunday Times Biography of the Year.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloodaxe Books
    Release dateApr 27, 2023
    ISBN9781780375632
    Earth House

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      Book preview

      Earth House - Matthew Hollis

      I

      1

      Causeway

      Beneath the rain-shadow and washed farmhouses,

      in the service of the old shore,

      we waited for the rising of the road,

      the south lane laden in sand,

      the north in residue and wrack;

      the tide drawing off the asphalt

      leaving our tyres little to disperse;

      still, the water under wheel was forceful –

      cleft between the chassis and the sea –

      that clean division that the heart rages for.

      But halfway out the destination ceases to be the prize,

      and what matters is the sudden breadth of vision:

      to the north, a hovering headland,

      to the south, a shoal of light –

      the sea off-guarded, but hunting:

      our licence brief, unlikely to be renewed.

      Between mainland and island, in neither sway,

      a nodding of the needle as the compass takes its weigh.

      2

      The Sea Stick

      The low tide brings her in,

      scouring the surf-line

      for dogweed and jellies,

      stones coughed from the sea.

      What interests her more

      is the take of wood

      that she gathers for the fire.

      She knows how things burn,

      beginning with the kindling:

      birch bark and fir cones,

      dust from the wood wasps,

      dried grasses, wisp cotton, a feather.

      Then the fragments of spark-wood:

      willow and cedar, an arrow

      of spruce, to have

      the flame go higher.

      What interests her most

      is the hardwood: some oak

      or beech to split and stack,

      to bear the weight of winter.

      But this tide brings something strange:

      straightened wood, an arm in length.

      It is not much, but in her mind

      it might be

      a cane or staff or walking stick,

      a tottering strut to take the strain,

      a shepherd’s crook, a stake, a spear,

      a plinth to prop the coal-shed door,

      a chair back or a table leg,

      the foot to foot a lovers’

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