Description
Paul Batchelor is the most accomplished poet of his generation. His first collection, The Sinking Road, introduced a poet of formal and thematic range, as well as great technical skill. In The Love Darg (the title is an expression meaning ‘unpaid labour’), Batchelor draws with sharp intelligence on his working-class upbringing in the North of England during the period when the mining industry was being destroyed, and on the legacy this left him in adulthood. His subjects range from civic unrest to the natural world, from family tradition to erotic misadventure. Avoiding sentimentality and easy declarations of solidarity, these poems resound with formal elegance and emotional candour.
Paul Batchelor was born in Northumberland. His first collection of poems, The Sinking Road, was published by Bloodaxe in 2008. He has received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors, the Andrew Waterhouse Award, the Arthur Welton Award from the Authors Foundation, the Times Stephen Spender Prize for Translation, and the Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition.
(Clutag Press, 2014)
ISBN 978-0-9575626-1-5
