Paul Henry - Böcker

Paul Henry is has gained a reputation as one of of the best poets in the UK. Boy Running is his beautiful sixth collection by the Wales-born author, published in 2015, and the first to follow his: 'The Brittle Sea: New and Selected Poems'. We begin in a 'Studio Flat'. Cut adrift by marital break-up, the poet must sort through the emotional fallout and the various 'chattels' left behind; a sea of characteristic props: tables, lamps, metronomes, pianos, guitars. The poet's sons are at the heart of this section where pathos is balanced by humour amidst the characters of a small country town. A second section moves to the Welsh coastal town of Henry's childhood, Aberystywth, opening with a long poem, 'Kicking the Stone' set in the summer of 1969. Also in this section are some familiar characters from earlier poems such as Brown Helen and Catrin Sands. In the final sequence we meet 'Davy Blackrock': washed-up songwriter and modern day alter ego of Dafydd y Garreg Wen (David of the White Rock), alias David Owen (1720-1749), the blind, 18th century harpist and composer who fell asleep on a hill and dreamt the famous song which bears his name. In contrast to White Rock, Davy Blackrock lives on the top-floor of a tower block, 'star of an ashen town', nurses his guitar and dreams of the perfect song.

The title poem of The Glass Aisle, Paul Henry’s tenth collection of verse, is about the displacement of former workhouse residents and set on a stretch of canal in the Brecon Beacons National Park. A performance version of The Glass Aisle, featuring songs co-written with Brian Briggs (‘Stornoway’) is currently touring UK festivals.

The power of song, to sustain the human spirit, resonates through this new collection from Paul Henry. In 'Cave Songs', a trapped caver, haunted by a 'ghost choir', crawls back through songs to the sea; Welsh soldiers in 'As if to Sing', pack their hearts into a song, on the eve of the Battle of Passchendaele, 'for safe-keeping'; a woman's grief is 'unconscious of its song' and a child sings 'a song with no beginning or end' as father and son cross a bridge in the mist. Like the 'river’s trick' in Nightlines, 'at once moving and still', past and present share the same lyric moment in Henry’s work, the same 'torchsong' of music and light. A familiar surrealism pervades 'The Key to Penllain', the collection’s longest poem, set in the 1960’s. Its time-bending dream-sequence sees Greek gods sunbathing on a Ceredigion beach while two children dig for a key that could save the planet.Full of the musical lyricism admired by readers and fellow poets alike, 'As if to Sing' is an essential addition to this poet's compelling body of work.

The Milk Thief is time - as it colours the lives of the characters and relatives who feature in Paul Henry's new collection of poems. The first two sections of the book are set primarily against the backdrop of the Ceredigion coast in Wales. A giant turtle washed up on the beach, an encounter with the British Boomerang Champion, and the summer sandals worn by the poet's father, are among the incidents, people and objects that inspire these poems. The coastline also features in a sequence centred around twelve impressionistic portraits of female relatives entitled 'The Visitors'. Yet here, as elsewhere throughout the book, belonging is ultimately defined by love and not by place - a belief reinforced in the harder-edged final section of the book, 'Newport East', where the colder realities of city life are seen through the poet's sympathetic and transforming eye.Paul Henry was born in Aberystwyth in 1959. He currently lives in Gwent with his wife and three sons. Originally a singer-songwriter, he combines freelance writing with working as a Careers Adviser. In 1989 he received an Eric Gregory Award.

The Guardian's Poem of the Week, 8th November 2010The Black GuitarClearing out ten years from a wardrobeI opened its lid and saw Joewritten twice in its dust, in a child's hand,then a squiggled seagull or two.Joe, Joea man's tears are worth nothing,but a child's name in the dust, or in the sandof a darkening beach, that's a life's work.I touched two strings, to hear how muchtwo lives can slip out of tunethen I left it,brought down the night on it, for fear, Joeof hearing your unbroken voice, or the seaif I played it.Here is a book of ghosts, from the mysterious traveller in the title poem who, mistaken for another man, starts to crave his new alter ego, to the first person of 'Between Two Bridges', Henry's long poem on Newport, who follows his teenage ghost across the city for a night:He pulls away. The wind puts its lips to an arcade.A seagull on a barber's pole waits to open its blades.How the living haunt themselves is the concern of Ingrid's Husband, and the author discovers his spirits through an imagery of absences: a child's signature in the dust of an old guitar; the stone plinth where a café once stood; a white balloon drifting down a shopping arcade; a chateau, still furnished with the belongings of its vanished owner…Love continues to underscore the commonplace in Paul Henry's fifth collection and this lyric poet's distinctive voice continues to haunt its readers."Ingrid's Husband showcases Henry's eye for striking imagery… Ingrid's Husband succeeds as a powerful meditation on loss, and its tentative, never fully realised, attempts at renewal are always affecting… there's more than enough fine writing in this volume to reward sustained attention."New Welsh Review"Henry's poems work through images deftly juxtaposed; they evoke a world of fleeting memories and echo the processes of intuitive thought… Paul Henry can be mischievously perceptive of the danger lurking behind appearances." Poetry Salzburg"Paul Henry's lyrical poems achieve perfect pitch, matching sound to sense with, seemingly a minimum of effort. In Ingrid's Husband, his fifth collection from Seren, musicality of line is evident throughout."Poetry Review"With the purity of a sixteenth-century poet, Paul Henry lets fall his beautiful lyrics like cloaks in the mud of every day. Effortless epiphanies and images gradually break open, releasing a strange power, a dark ocean of longing and loss. His poetry deepens our perception of the world."Hugo Williams"A poet's poet, Paul Henry gets maximum effect from minimum language. The ordinary becomes alive with possibility, comic, moving, magical, compassionate. A sense of the music of words combines with an endlessly inventive imagination."U.A. Fanthorpe"What I hate about this book is the fact that I didn't write it."Sheenagh PughPaul Henry was born in Aberystwyth in 1959. He currently lives in Gwent with his wife and three sons. Originally a singer-songwriter, he combines freelance writing with working as a Careers Adviser. In 1989 he received an Eric Gregory Award.

This substantial selection from the work of Paul Henry confirms that he has, over two decades, been quietly building an ouvre of beautifully crafted poems. And, by popular request, in the new poemsA" section, rugby fans will find the three poems Henry was commissioned to write for BBC2's 'Poetry in Motion', which celebrated the Welsh national rugby team as they prepared for the 2008 rugby world cup. Born in Aberystwyth on the west coast of Wales, into a family of musicians, music pervades his poems on childhood, as do a large cast of aunts, neighbours, friends and relations, many of whom appear in Dylan Thomas-like character sketches. Henry doesn't pin his characters down but allows them to flourish as archetypes, evokes their history and context with a rare empathy and a lyrical lightness of touch. Some of his earliest portrait-poems are set against the Breconshire villages where Henry lived from his mid teens, a move south to Newport, Gwent, inspires poems about the undulating river Usk and the post-industrial cityscape and its impact on people's lives. The individual human voice, the ragged vagaries of the heart and soul, the joys and sorrows of family life feature here but this poetry is personal without being confessional, preferring tender observation to sensationalism or didacticism. For a poet well-known for one-page lyrics it is instructive to be reminded of several of his longer sequences, such as those in 'The Shell House' which vary in tone per section, much like a concerto or musical piece.