New Selected Poems

New Selected Poems is a poet’s choice of over thirty years’ work. Minhinnick’s poetry explores the complexities of belonging in the world. It is rooted in the rich particularity of industrial south Wales and the Welsh seaside resort in which he now lives, but its scope is global. New Selected Poems includes ‘An Opera in Baghdad’ as well as translations from six modern Welsh language poets; it mourns the ancient, savaged landscape of Iraq and listens to primeval echoes in the Welsh landscape; it celebrates the rhythms of the Americas. For Minhinnick, people, relationships and landscapes interconnect. The poetry that is true to that world is both lyrical and highly political. Cover photograph © Robert Minhinnick

Table of Contents:
from A Thread in the Maze (1978) Sap Short Wave A Live Tradition Garlic Mustard, from Herbals Dawn: Cwrt y Felin 1921: The Grandfather’s Story from Native Ground (1979) Ways of Learning The Children J.P. Llangewydd The Drinking Art Insomnia Sker from Life Sentences (1983) Rhys Driving in Fog Catching My Breath An Address On the Headland Burmese Tales from The Dinosaur Park (1985) The Dinosaur Park On the Llyn Fawr Hoard in the National Museum of Wales Dock Eelers The Resort Picking from Breaking Down from The Looters (1989) The Looters ‘What’s the Point of Being Timid when the House is Falling Down?’ The Mansion Epilogue from Fairground Music Men In the Watchtower Looking for Arthur from Hey Fatman (1994) Homework Daisy at the Court A History of Dunraven Hey Fatman Reunion Street Listening to History The Swimming Lesson from After the Hurricane (2002) The Bombing of Baghdad as seen from an Electrical Goods Shop Twenty-Five Laments for Iraq The Discovery of Radioactivity Carioca Songs for the Lugmen She Drove a ’Seventies Plymouth Neolithic The Porthcawl Preludes From the Rock Pool from The Adulterer’s Tongue (2003) Belly Button Song (from ‘Botwm i’r Botwm Bol’, by Menna Elfyn) Taliesin (from ‘Taliesin’, by Emyr Lewis) Beginning to Forget (from ‘Dechrau’r Anghofio’, by Gwyneth Lewis) Landscape without a Hat (from ‘Tirlun heb Het’, by Bobi Jones) A Song about Soup (from ‘Cawl’, by Elin ap Hywel) Automobiles (from ‘Ceir’, by Iwan Llwyd) from King Driftwood (2008) An Opera in Baghdad The Hourglass La Otra Orilla Eavesdropping The Castaway The Saint of Tusker Rock The Fox in the National Museum of Wales Index of Titles and First Lines

About the Author :
Robert Minhinnick’s recent publications include the novels, Sea Holly (2007) and Limestone Man (2015)from Seren and Fairground Music: the World of Porthcawl Funfair (Gomer, 2010). He edited the international quarterly, Poetry Wales, 1997 – 2008, and received a major Creative Wales award in 2008 to write a collection of short stories about refugees, The Keys of Babylon (Seren, 2011). His poems have twice won the Forward Prize for ‘best individual poem’ and his essays have twice won Wales Book of the Year. An established environmentalist, he is joint founder of Friends of the Earth Cymru, 1984, and the charity, Sustainable Wales, founded 1997, for which he is a special advisor. A film, Diary of the Last Man made by Park6 Productions, is released in 2017.

Review :
Robert Minhinnick's book has work from nine earlier collections, ranging back to 1978.And it demonstrates what a skilled and strong poet he is.The best of his poems are always very readable, and many of them focus on the area of Wales where he lives.An early poem, '1921: The Grandfather's Story,' evokes the man and the history of the place, 'A striking, starving Glamorgan/The continent of his experience.'And it deftly paints a picture of a hot summer and a social situation: Ffornwg reduced to one Green rope of water, glutinous With gnats, and the village men Moithered by heat, the latest scabs, And an army of imported police Billeted like Stuart troops. The past is present in that poem but Minhinnick isn't limited to writing about it.Other poems are firmly set in the contemporary world, and the poet takes note of an amusement arcade where there are 'slots and levers and the engrossing screen,' and 'figures hunched like snipers at the dials.'There's danger, too: I walk into the bar and see the faces, Ugly, staring, full of youth's conceit: I don't look around because they're all hard cases, But take my order to a corner seat. But I don't want to give the impression that Minhinnick writes only about Wales.There are poems set in America, and a sequence, 'Twenty-Five Laments for Iraq,' relates to his visit to this country: While we are filming the sick child The sick child behind us Dies.And as we turn our camera The family group smartens itself As if grieving might offend. I'm not sure that another sequence, 'The Porthcawl Preludes,' works quite as well, and some of the forty or so short pieces struck me as too inconsequential to hold the attention, though others are tidy little commentaries and observations.But this is a minor quibble, and the lesser items can easily be absorbed into the whole without any major problems. A short review can't really deal with what is a substantial book of poems, but I'll close by recommending it to anyone who likes to read well-written, intelligent poetry.