Catherine Barnett – författare

The loneliness that collects in mirrors and faces-at bedside vigils and in city streets-quickens Catherine Barnett's metaphysical poems, which are like speculative prescriptions for this common human experience. Here loneliness is filled with belonging, which is in turn filled with loneliness, each state suffused and emptied by the other. Barnett's fourth collection is part manifesto, part how-to manual, part apologia: a guide to the homeopathic dangers and healing powers of an emotion so charged with eros, humor, and elusive beauty it becomes a companion both desired and eschewed, necessary and illuminating.Solutions for the Problem of Bodies in Space is never far from grief or a comedy of bewilderment, inadequacy, hope. Entering Barnett's world is a little like entering an electrically charged cloud, and the prospect of either falling or getting caught in a storm brings vertiginous and unpredictable pleasures. Bristling with uncanny intelligence, the poems are sometimes quiet elegies, sometimes meditations on art, love, and the failures of love that so often define love. Barnett might be called a realist-her style is radiantly exact-yet somehow she is a guide both into and out of the existential void. She has written a tender, dazzling collection of estrangement and intimacy.

Environment, Archaeology and Landscape is a collection of papers dedicated to Martin Bell on his retirement as Professor of Archaeological Science at the University of Reading. Three themes outline how wetland and inland environments can be related and investigated using multi-method approaches. ‘People and the Sea: Coastal and Intertidal Archaeology’ explores the challenges faced by humans in these zones – particularly relevant to the current global sea level rise. ‘Patterns in the Landscape: Mobility and Human-environment Relationships’ includes some more inland examples and examines how past environments, both in Britain and Europe, can be investigated and brought to public attention. The papers in ‘Archaeology in our Changing World: Heritage Resource Management, Nature Conservation and Rewilding’ look at current challenges and debates in landscape management, experimental and community archaeology. A key theme is how archaeology can contribute time depth to an understanding of biodiversity and environmental sustainability. This volume will be of value to all those interested in environmental archaeology and its relevance to the modern world.

In this unprecedented anthology, acclaimed poets from around the world select poems from their countries of origin to share with a wider audience. Readers will find eloquence, urgency, and idiosyncrasy, poems all in English but springing from drastically varied voices, geographies, and histories. Using an artist’s rather than a scholar’s approach, these poems — chosen out of love and admiration by practicing poets — show the vitality of English deployed by revered and emerging poets in Ghana (selected by Kwame Dawes), India (by Sudeep Sen), South Africa (by Rustum Kozain), the Caribbean (by Ishion Hutchinson and five other Caribbean poets), Canada (by Todd Swift), and the Antipodes: New Zealand (by Hinemoana Baker) and Australia (by Les Murray). Mindful of the contentious history of colonization and its staining of any notion of a unified Anglophone poetics, editors Catherine Barnett and Tiphanie Yanique have created an “anthology of anthologies”: a choral oratorio, a many-accented gathering of voices that invites further discovery and promotes an intra-cultural conversation. Featured poets include: Ama Ata Aidoo, Tatamkulu Afrika, Kofi Anyidoho, Tusiata Avia, Kofi Awoonor, Marion Bethel, Christian Bök, Jenny Bornholdt, Dionne Brand, Kamau Brathwaite, Diana Brebner, Abena Busia, Michelle Cahill, Christian Campbell, Vahni Capildeo, Priya Sarukkai Chabria, Amit Chaudhuri, George Elliot Clarke, Jennifer Compton, Jeremy Cronin, Mahadai Das, Ingrid de Kok, Peter Goldsworthy, Lorna Goodison, Bernadette Hall, Lesbia Harford, Shake Keane, A. M. Klein, Shara McCallum, Bill Manhire, Kei Miller, Arthur Nortje, Kwadwo Opoku-Agyeman, Richard Outram, P. K. Page, Marlene Nourbese Philip, Olive Senior, Mongane Wally Serote, Kenneth Slessor, Kelwyn Sole, Billy Marshall Stoneking, Arundhathi Subramaniam, Habib Tiwoni, Hone Tuwhare, Priscila Uppal, Chris van Wyk, David Wevill, Judith Wright, and many more.

Silchester: The Landscape Setting of the Iron Age Oppidum and Roman City is the definitive report on the Silchester Environs Project, which combined extensive fieldwork and prospection to examine the Iron Age hinterland of Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester), its settlement pattern, economy and development. The landscape setting of the Iron Age oppidum and Roman city of Calleva was initially explored through analysis of the available aerial photography and LiDAR data over c. 1000 km2. Focusing on a 50 km square centred on Calleva, six locations with suspected later prehistoric enclosures were sampled by coring and excavation and accompanied by extensive programmes of radiocarbon dating and environmental, especially pollen, analysis. Phases of activity and/or settlement were followed by abandonment and the regeneration of the woodland. Neolithic and Bronze Age activity was identified, but the first permanent settlements appeared to be of Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age date. The period with the most numerous settlements is the Middle Iron Age (4th to 2nd century BC), which was characterised by hillforts and smaller ditched enclosures. Their abandonment was once again followed by woodland regeneration. At the end of the 1st century BC new settlements were founded, including the 38 ha defended oppidum in a wooded and otherwise empty landscape. A territory with a radius of c. 2 km and devoid of individual farmsteads was established around the oppidum to provide land for cultivation and grazing and it was retained with the founding of the Roman city. This territory corresponds approximately with the combined present-day parishes of Mortimer West End and Silchester. The charcoal assemblages show evidence for the management of the woodlands including for the preparation of charcoal from the Late Iron Age though the Roman and into the medieval period. Dated charcoal shows continued activity in the Environs in the post-Roman and early medieval periods including the re-occupation of the hillfort at Pond Farm.