Nominated for The
Hawthornden Prize 2003
Shortlisted
for The Forward Prize (First Collection)
2002 and The Forward Prize (Single
Poem) 2001
‘A
truly amazing first volume of poems.’
Claire
Tomalin, The Guardian
‘The
most important debut this year... Shukman turns a slow, calm gaze on the world,
captures what he sees with a skill that conceals his artistry. Beneath the understatement
the emotion glints bright as quartz.’
With this assured and powerful first collection, which quickly sold out and went to further printings, Henry Shukman springs fully-formed into the poetry world, having already won a raft of prizes for individual poems.
His sensibility is unique, engaging and immediate; we are drawn into the worlds of these poems by his accurate eye, his sensual line and the warmth of his communion with the scene he describes. Ranging across the globe, from Mexico to Japan, from the States to Southern England, these poems can be lyrical and deeply affecting, wryly funny or wildly imaginative. From a lonely mother attempting to learn the piano to a ski-jump that never ends, from a redemptive encounter with horses on a cold day to a miraculous bowl of chicken soup, these poems display a vibrancy and variety rarely seen in contemporary poetry. But Shukman’s great strength is in the domestic: the complexities of love, and the rites of passage of childhood and parenthood, are re-entered with candour, grace and originality. In Doctor No’s Garden is an affectionate, refreshing debut, striking in its imagery and insight, remarkable for its lightness of touch and emotional weight.
Henry Shukman won the Daily Telegraph Arvon Prize in 2000, and
has received awards from the Arts Council of England and Southern Arts. His
poems have appeared in the Guardian, Times, Independent on Sunday, Daily
Telegraph, London Review of Books and
T.L.S. He has worked as a trombonist,
a trawlerman and a travel-writer and is Poet in Residence at the Wordsworth
Trust.
For more information on this title please contact;
Christian Lewis
Jonathan Cape publicity
Tel: 020 7840 8539, Fax: 020 7932 0077
e-mail: clewis@randomhouse.co.uk
Praise for HENRY SHUKMAN
“A truly
amazing first volume of poems: whether it’s a foul attack of eczema, a snowy
field, sewing on a button or remembering being a small boy watching his father
pee, he seems to choose exactly the right words, and yet takes you by surprise.
A real gift here.”
Claire
Tomalin, The Guardian
“The most important debut this year… Untempted to cram images, to try
and impress with sputtering verbal pyrotechnics, he turns a slow, calm gaze on
the world, captures what he sees with a skill that conceals his artistry.
Shukman has a sharp eye for the descriptive detail, but he can move
effortlessly from the concrete to the abstract… he evokes all that is unspoken,
unsaid, and yet most important at the same time.”
Rachel Campbell-Johnston, The Times
“[This] debut
poet holds his own against famous names… Weirdly ingenious anecdotes feature
prominently… Almost everything brims with surely achieved detail. His talent
lies in sheer narrative resource, and humour.”
Alan Brownjohn, The
Sunday Times
“Despite their quiet, elegant demeanour, these poems tack and skim to elemental forces. Shukman’s voice is assured and undemonstrative. This is a concise, well-shaped first collection [with] the kind of bold emotion more usually associated with American verse, [and] lines whose tensile strength is woven from something other than irony.”
John Greening, Times Literary Supplement
“An object
lesson in how lyricism, emotional precision and the ache of nostalgia can be
combined.”
Wayne Burrows,
Poetry London
“Shukman was a clear
winner. The judges chose him for his craftsmanship, the lyrical intensity of
his work and its warm, emotional weight. They thought he was in a class of his
own.”
Aldeburgh Prize Judges’ Report
“Henry
Shukman’s poetry is distinctive and mature. As well as responding with
imagination, intelligence, and energy to a whole range of subjects, places, and
people, he has an exhilarating ability to pack it all in with apparent
effortlessness.”
Douglas Dunn
“Henry
Shukman’s first collection arrives with a combination of freshness and
authority which derives from the fact that his poems are truly rooted in memory
and experience. He has a generous spirit which gives his poetry a refreshing
clarity.”
Carol
Ann Duffy
“Shukman is clever without the least display of ostentation. Here are accessible, wise, humane, and artfully devised inventions by a poet with the skill and taste to conceal that art.”
Michael Donaghy
“You can’t help but relish the range in this ambitious first collection: from fathers and sons to Olympic athletes, from far flung travel to a school science lesson. All of the poems are marked by Shukman’s eye for the sweetness of detail, by his cool and tender gaze, and he conveys so well the terror of losing – and finding – love.”
Jo Shapcott