Dart

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Like the river, the poem starts on Dartmoor, and ends at Dartmouth, in the sea. People introduced along the way include "at least one mythical figure ("Jan Coo: his name means So-and-So of the Woods"), a naturalist, a fisherman and bailiff, dead tin miners, a forester, a water nymph, a canoeist, town boys, a swimmer, a water extractor, a dairy worker, a sewage worker, a stonewaller, a boat builder, a poacher, an oyster gatherer, a ferryman, a naval cadet, a river pilot and finally a seal watcher". [4] Reception [ edit ]

Her second collection, Dart (2002), combined verse and prose, and tells the story of the River Dart in Devon from a variety of perspectives. Jeanette Winterson called it a " … moving, changing poem, as fast-flowing as the river and as deep … a celebration of difference … ". [11] Dart won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002.

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This is a heartening book for all sorts of reasons. Oswald shows that poetry need not choose between Hughesian deep myth and Larkinesque social realism. Dart frequently combines the two, moving in the same sentence from religious invocation to marketing jabber ("may He pull you out at Littlehempston, at the pumphouse, which is my patch, the world's largest operational Sirofloc plant"). She shows, post-New Generation, that wry ironies and streetwise demotic do not exhaust the avaliable range of tonal and thematic possibilities. She offers, in a word, what too much contemporary poetry forbids itself: ambition.

Tasja Dorkofikis (5 December 2013). "Poetry in translation – The Popescu Prize 2013". English PEN. Archived from the original on 17 February 2014 . Retrieved 7 December 2013. In 1994, she was the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award. Her first collection of poetry, The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile (1996), won a Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) in 1996, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize in 1997. Judges for the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize Announced". 19 August 2015. Archived from the original on 5 March 2019 . Retrieved 19 August 2015. I really enjoyed this collection but I find it difficult to fully connect to poetry. Having said that, this collection completely evoked the mythical and eerie sense of Devon that brings the magic of the place to life. It is a beautiful part of England but harsh in different weather extremes; Oswald captures this perfectly through her poems and I got a real sense of place through listening.a b "2013 Popescu Prize". The Poetry Society. Archived from the original on 1 August 2015 . Retrieved 18 August 2021.

I usually struggle to read long pieces of poetry, and so I was surprised to find that I enjoyed this so much. Again, this came from my boyfriend – he had to read it for a module of his, and started reading it aloud while I was there. I think this approach was what kept me interested; I didn’t read it all aloud, but if I found myself getting tired it helped to imagine it being read out in my head, rather than just reading it. Focusing on the rhythms and beat of the piece not only helped me read it but I think it also adds to the feel of it – there are places with little rhythm and places with a clear beat; this is obviously intentional, and should be read as such. I am always fascinated by the many and varied way in which one comes to a book. In the case of ‘Dart’ it was for two reasons. This project has been brewing in my mind for some time now. Then I heard about this book, and how it had been an inspiration for Max Porter’s Lanny, which is a book that speaks loudly to me and which I love. So, there are the two elements in my journey to be holding a copy of Dart. I would very much like to tell the story of the Aongatete River onto which my home has a boundary and from which I draw my drinking water. I am, just as the Māori of the past, invested in the health of the water for my (and my family’s) life and well being. Some of our major rivers have been given the status of legal entity in the laws of the country and so I am fascinated to protect and tell the story of my own river. The word for what we want and need is ‘kaitiakitanga’ – guardianship or stewardship to protect our precious river. Herbert, Interview by Susannah (2 October 2012). "Alice Oswald, poet – portrait of the artist". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 13 March 2016.In 2004, Oswald was named as one of the Poetry Book Society's Next Generation poets. Her collection Woods etc., published in 2005, was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year). In ‘Interview with the Wind’, published in The Guardian during May 2009, its speaker says, ‘I think of the Wind as the Earth’s voice muscle, / Very twisted and springy’. In 1994, she was the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award. Her first collection of poetry, The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile (1996), was shortlisted for a Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) in 1996, [10] as well as the T. S. Eliot Prize in 1997.

Her second collection is Dart (2002), a long work which combines verse and prose, and tells the story of the River Dart in Devon. To write this poem, she spent three years collecting information about the river and talking to people who use the river in their daily lives. The result is a highly original dream-like poem told from a variety of perspectives. Jeanette Winterson called it a '… moving, changing poem, as fast-flowing as the river and as deep … a celebration of difference …' ( The Times, 27 July 2002). Dart won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002. Dart is a long-form poem about a river. The genesis of the poem was interviews that Oswald conducted with people who live and work along the Dart River in England. She wove their first-person voices into distinct characters whose edges blur throughout the section-less poem. She varies the form organically, according to which voice and character are speaking. For instance, at one point she alternates between a forester, who speaks in paragraphs, and a water nymph, who speaks in quatrains. A Short Story of Falling - Metal Engravings by Maribel Mas. Published by Andrew J Moorhouse, Fine Press Poetry

Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 107th edition, vol. 2, Burke's Peerage, Ltd, 2003, p. 1987 shortlisted for Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection), The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile [10] She trained as a classicist and was the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award in 1994. Her first collection of poetry, The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile (1996), includes poems reflecting her love of gardening and the entertaining long poem, 'The Men of Gotham'. This collection won a Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) in 1996, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize in 1997. In October 2011, Oswald published her 6th collection, Memorial. Subtitled "An Excavation of the Iliad", [12] Memorial is based on the Iliad attributed to Homer, but departs from the narrative form of the Iliad to focus on, and so commemorate, the individual named characters whose deaths are mentioned in that poem. [13] [14] [15] Later in October 2011, Memorial was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, [16] but in December 2011, Oswald withdrew the book from the shortlist, [17] [18] citing concerns about the ethics of the prize's sponsors. [19] In 2013, Memorial won the Poetry Society’s Corneliu M. Popescu Prize for poetry in translation. [20] Kellaway, Kate (2 October 2011). "Memorial by Alice Oswald – review". The Observer. London: Guardian News and Media Limited . Retrieved 1 June 2012.