Dear Crane

Susan Wicks has published eight collections of poetry, five of them with Bloodaxe Books: Dear Crane (2021), The Months (2016), House of Tongues (2011), De-iced (2007) and Night Toad: New & Selected Poems (2003), which includes a selection from three earlier books published by Faber: Singing Underwater, winner of the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Prize; Open Diagnosis, which was one of the Poetry Society’s New Generation Poets titles; and The Clever Daughter, a Poetry Book Society Choice which was shortlisted for both T.S. Eliot and Forward Prizes. House of Tongues, Night Toad, Singing Underwater and The Months are all Poetry Book Society Recommendations. She has also published three novels, The Key (Faber, 1997), Little Thing (Faber, 1998) and A Place to Stop (Salt, 2012), a short memoir, Driving My Father (Faber, 1995), and a collection of short fiction, Roll Up for the Arabian Derby (Bluechrome, 2008). Her two book-length translations of the French poet Valérie Rouzeau, Cold Spring in Winter (Arc, 2009) and Talking Vrouz (Arc, 2013) have between them won the Scott Moncrieff Prize for Translation from French and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize for Literary Translation, and been shortlisted for the the International Griffin Prize for Poetry. Born and raised in Kent, she lives in Tunbridge Wells, and is a freelance writer and translator.

Wicks can be both a fearless and arrestingly tender kind of writer, unafraid of taking a thought into uncomfortable, raw or unexpected places.

• 9 Dear Crane10 High Wind11 For the Blind12 Tamar13 The Romance of Steam14 Crane15 Dear Crane16 Feeding the Ducks17 Driving to Dorking18 Separation Anxiety19 Free Slew20 Dear Crane22 Look23 Emergency24 Parable25 Two Tractors26 Perhaps27 Dear Crane31 Paint32 Over the Old Station33 Two Trains34 Halfway35 Explaining Snow36 Dear Crane40 Stacked Planes, 5.30 a.m.42 Dicky Ticker44 Midwich Cuckoo45 M2546 The Old Cemetery, Cove47 Dear Crane50 Clubbercise51 Elderly Bathing Solutions52 Rhubarb53 Maine, End of Summer54 After the Lobster Feast55 Dear Crane57 Sirinas58 Reading Scott Fitzgerald at the Gorgona60 Olive tree with Clothes-pegs61 Leaving Alikí62 Credo63 Sunset at Karnagio64 Marble Beach, with Crane65 Dear Crane69 After a Daughter’s Miscarriage71 The Road to Bardigues72 On the Day of the Royal Wedding73 Lopped Trees74 Windmill above Golfech75 Dear Crane78 The Sunday Hunters79 Robert Singing80 Notes