Cold Spring in Winter (Visible Poets)

Shortlisted for the 2010 Griffin International Prize, the world's largest poetry prize. Cold Spring in Winter (Pas Revoir in its original French) caused quite a stir when it was published in 1999. Here was the shock of an authentically new voice in whose urgent, stammered cadences an adult, and the little girl she used to be, join together to compose a lament for her dead father, a scrap-metal dealer. It takes a page or two to get used to this strange mixture of 'child-speak', youth slang, made-up words, puns and sophisticated adult expression (all perfectly conveyed in Susan Wick's translation), but once immersed in this extraordinary sequence of poems, it is hard to put it down, so compelling, strange and moving does it prove to be. Arc Visible Poets' series no. 25 "... this poet has found a truly authentic voice in what will doubtlessly be a glittering career this side of the Channel." Poetry Review