Useful Verses
23 March 2017Imprint: Picador
Synopsis
Winner of the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize
Richard Osmond's debut collection Useful Verses follows in the tradition of the best nature writing, being as much about the human world as the natural, the present as the past: Osmond, a professional forager, has a deep knowledge of flora and fauna as they appear in both natural and human history, as...
Details
23 March 201780 pages
9781509824199Imprint: Picador
Reviews
Useful Verses is a remarkable first collection: great precision of language married to a uniquely informed and focused view of the natural world.William Boyd
Osmond's job as a wild-food forager makes it unsurprising that his debut collection, Useful Verses, should be such a treasure trove of information. But what gives his poems energy is not just that they exhibit a deft authority on plants and poisons, remedies and road-kill, but that they are equally attuned to human and digital environments. The result is a work that reveals much about the world, both ancient and modern.Guardian
‘Useful Verses is a wonderfully original collection, which relishes and renews everything that poetry can do with language. It’s also a challenging vision of our relations with the natural world.’Professor Edna Longley, Chair of the judging panel for The Seamus Heaney Centre: First Collection Poetry Prize 2018
