A National Trust publication, with photos, about the Southwell Workhouse, a mostly empty building. The "Food and Prayer" section begins with "Even this Earth must yield a little at every step we take. Can't you feel? - or hear our dead: their tiny time-shrunk moans filtering up through clay, loam made dense with flesh and bone - just to support us?" which is accessible enough, though in the book it's 3 stanzas and 12 lines. Later, "Plan" uses line-breaks to break words, making new words - e.g. "as I/ lift into that dark or/biting earth". I think "Daguerreotype" has the best chance of working outside of this book.
Several of the poems have useful (usually historical) footnotes.
Other reviews
- David Pollard (Fearnought is vivid and empathetic. It is clear that the poet was strongly affected by the echoes that struck his inner ear in the spaces and emptiness of the workhouse. However, it still seems (to me at least) like an almost impossible task well performed. The problem is that it was a task)
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