Falling Awake

She says that poetry is what happens when language becomes impossible. If you’ve never read her – get this collection now. – Jeanette Winterson * Guardian, Book of the Year *[A] modern classic. – Jeremy Noel-Tod * Sunday Times, Book of the Year *A miraculous collection. – Kate Kellaway * Observer, Book of the Year *A liminal text… Unmistakably original. – Craig Raine * Times Literary Supplement, Book of the Year *A sublime poet of the natural world. – Rupert Thomson * Herald, Book of the Year *An astonishing book of beauty, intensity and poise – a revelation…The collection’s title is spot on. I cannot think of any poet who is more watchful or with a greater sense of gravity. – Kate Kellaway * Observer *Stunning. Is she now our greatest living poet[?]… Her work is commanding… She is less twinkly-eyed than Simon Armitage, more committed to experimentation than Duffy and just as playful…as Don Paterson. For sheer, sustained invention and intellectual rigour, her work is perhaps closest to Kei Miller… If there’s any justice in the poetry world, the title [Poet Laureate] should be offered to this gardener-classicist who is bringing the British landscape to life in poetry again. – Charlotte Runcie * Daily Telegraph *The pieces included here are held together by Oswald’s luminous, almost alien powers of observation. – Yasmine Seale * Literary Review *Magic, the music of nature, the resurrection of the dead: all these feel real when you read Alice Oswald. Her stunning new collection deserves the Forward Prize. * Sunday Telegraph *[It] confirms her as one of the most gifted English poets of the past 20 years. – Jeremy Noel-Todd * Sunday Times *

Alice Oswald lives in Devon and is married with three children. Her collections include Dart, which won the 2002 T.S. Eliot Prize, Woods etc. (Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize), A Sleepwalk on the Severn (Hawthornden Prize), Weeds and Wildflowers (Ted Hughes Award), Memorial (Warwick Prize for Writing), and Falling Awake, which won the 2016 Costa Poetry Award and the Griffin Prize for Poetry. She was elected as the Oxford University Professor of Poetry in 2019.