Landscape from a Dream

Landscape from a Dream is Elisabeth Bletsoe's first collection in ten years and offers startling evidence of a powerful voice that should be better known. Very much a poet of place, Elisabeth Bletsoe fuses elements of folklore, botany, literature, myth and narrative into a poetry that is at once feminist in spirit, forthright, and - to a certain extent - at odds with the prevailing British poetic styles, whether conservative or radical. Rooted in the landscape of her native Dorset, this is poetry of deep observation, but within that she also gives voice to some of Thomas Hardy's heroines - not just Tess Durbeyfield, but lesser-known female characters such as Marty South in The Woodlanders - characters who are much a part of this Dorset landscape as Bletsoe's poetry is. And the voices they gain are not the voices in Hardy's narratives, but strong, independent voices who have thrown off their creator.