Claire Crowther - Böcker

'The Clockwork Gift' is Claire Crowther's second collection of poems, following 'Stretch of Closures' which was shortlisted for the Jerwood/Aldeburgh Prize for Best First Collection in 2007. The poems in 'The Clockwork Gift' continue the lyrical and reflective voice of the previous volume and examine the place of older women in contemporary culture. Claire Crowther combines a control of rhetoric with myth-making skill and these poems include striking new figures such as the yellow-furred thike and its human cousin, or the countrywoman who answers the call of Maleficence. This is also the landscape of looking back; memory is a faculty idolised in our time and shown here to be as fragile as the stuff of grandmother's dresses yet tough enough to bond complex human relationships.

On Narrowness is Claire Crowther's third collection. Her previous collections attracted wide attention; the first was shortlisted for the Aldeburgh first collection prize. She is poet-in-residence at the Royal Mint Museum for 2014-15 and lives in Somerset with her husband, physicist Keith Barnham.

The design of a coin is an act of succinct aggrandisement. Bare George explores the coinage of power through a far more famous numismatic image: created in 1817 for King George III and his son, the Prince Regent, by celebrity gem designer Benedetto Pistrucci (1784-1855), it pictures a saint, young St. George, lancing a dragon. He is undressed. Any Greek warrior of artistic relevance to the nineteenth century would be. The dragon is submitting, as the opposition needs to be shown to do.

Solar Cruise is Claire Crowther's fourth collection and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Spring 2020. Her first collection, Stretch of Closures, was shortlisted for the Aldeburgh Best First Collection prize. Solar Cruise is a love story of a poet and a physicist who is devoted to halting climate change through solar energy. It is a passionately personal but also political work. Claire Crowther's poetry has always been linguistically playful; here she uses an engaging variety of stylistic devices to deliver perhaps the most important message of our time, that solar energy can save us from extinction. Claire Crowther is Deputy Editor of Long Poem Magazine and lives in Somerset with her partner, Emeritus Professor Keith Barnham, Distinguished Research Fellow at Imperial College, London."One of our most intelligent surrealists." -Fiona Sampson"Like Marianne Moore, she is able to locate the poetry asleep in the language of science." -David Morley, Poetry Review

Claire Crowther's fifth collection, A Pair of Three, is her most personal yet, a story of marriage to a widower. It explores a trio, wife, husband and first wife, in a love story that is moving, uplifting, often funny but rarely told. The emotional power of lyric, the narrative of ballad and the drama of modernist poems are all displayed in this distinctive sequence. Claire Crowther's previous collection, Solar Cruise, was widely praised and awarded a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her first collection, Stretch of Closures, was shortlisted for the Aldeburgh Best First Collection prize. She is Deputy Editor of Long Poem Magazine, teaches creative writing at Oxford University, and lives in Somerset.Reviews of Solar Cruise"Claire Crowther mosaics together poetic and scientific discourse to create new adventures in thought ... These poems perpetually test the ability of science language to infiltrate the lyric, to begin to make another kind of sense to that which hard science requires. ... There's a problem here - a gap in public understanding - and in that void, Crowther's poems dance and glow. ... Crowther's poems are fizzily cerebral, wordplay-avid, both sensuous and ratiocinative: 'I write crosswise. I experiment with words'." -Vidyan Ravinthiran"This outstanding collection reads as a profound love poem, a generous gift from an inquisitive poet to her bright and devoted physicist partner in a lucid relationship filled with creativity, mutual appreciation and respect. It is a brilliant journey that takes the reader to unexpected and exhilarating places." -Leo Boix

"Crowther writes about this world, this country and this era with such accuracy and honesty you find yourself wrapped up in the mystic and otherly vision without question. For me the work sits with the Modernists in its uncompromising ambition, commitment to experiment and dignity of focus, but her voice is consistently contemporary, poised and original. There is always a fascinating psychological turn, an insight unearthed via science or history or theology. A Selected should always be a 'greatest hits' of sorts, but it's rare to read a curation of such powerful coherence, drawing poems from the last fifteen years into a gathering momentum. Curious, beautiful and melancholy; a celebration of her work so far and the best starting point for new readers." -Luke Kennard

"The thike, Claire Crowther's imaginary creation, 'broods, plays, and is "othered" by an uncaring society'. The poetry that appeals to Crowther, and for which she acts as such an eloquent advocate, often does the same. The essays of Sense and Nonsense are passionate acts of elective affinity, precise and careful homages to kindred spirits from Lorine Niedecker and Veronica Forrest-Thomson to Denise Riley and R. F. Langley. Carrie Etter's forensic interviews send us back to Crowther's own poetry, and remind us that she is entirely at ease in such company. Generous and gladsome, a gift of a book." -David Wheatley