In The Conversation, Stephanie Norgate explores relationships between nature and the city, the past and present, and character and writer. Shaped through both speech and storytelling, these visual, sensuous and imaginative poems celebrate friendship, even in grief, closeness in times of isolation and lockdown, and the longing to bridge gaps and find cures. Miracles are found in the everyday, in a child’s sleep or a lit-up house. Textiles transform into remembrancers, landscape into emotion. A contemporary Daedalus views his life from a hang-glider. A scrap of handwriting, cafe talk, an exploding car, an earthquake, the naming of fields or a line of walkers ignite conversations about place, time and the tender paradoxes of mortality. Stephanie Norgate’s first collection Hidden River (2008) was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and was followed by The Blue Den (2012). The Conversation is her third collection. Her poetry has been praised for the ‘depth of its lyricism’ (Jackie Wills, Warwick Review), and for being ‘energetic and generous, and displaying a ‘feeling for place, for the roots of things’ and for being ‘searching, memorable and disconcerting … She has the ear for the music of a line and the shape and strength of an image.’ (R.V. Bailey, Artemis).

Table of Contents:
11 The House 12 Eavesdroppers 13 Word Hoards 14 Miracle 15 February Foxes 16 Sycamore 17 Dead Nettle in the Fann Street Wildlife Garden 18 Wildlife Garden in the City 29 outside some flats in Camberwell 21 Orthopaedics and Trauma, King’s College Hospital 23 Bedroom Tax 25 Evening Teaching 26 ask the heathland 27 walk in a wood after a long loneliness 28 The Machine 30 Night Walk with My Parents 31 To Wish on the Stone 32 The Bridge 34 lines prompted by an old leather travel bag 36 In Trieste 37 Jane Austen’s Visitor 38 Studio mirror: the maid speaks 39 Dalí among the cactuses 40 Time Slip 41 Sweet Woodruff 42 Comfort 43 The Night Table 44 Terrace Ghosts 45 on seeing a drift of blackthorn in April’s haze 46 Question 47 At the Stone Chamber of an Ancient Village 49 lockdown bluebells 50 above ourselves 51 To sing of soap in desperate times 53 An Hour’s Walk 55 The Sears and Roebuck sheet as Scrubs Bag 57 Through a glass darkly 58 Elegy for the Closeness of London 62 After an evening’s writing in the shed 63 The Summoner of Birds 64 The Wake 65 Your Poem 66 At St Erth 67 Walking the Path Again 69 The Conversation 70 Siskin 72 Daedalus over the Downs 74 Gate on the Downs 76 What the chair saw 77 The Clumsinesses 78 The Tile 79 Landings