The Silence by Gillian Clarke
POETRY BOOK SOCIETY RECOMMENDATION SPRING 2024 Penny Boxall Snippets of Yoruba interweave with

Snippets of Yoruba interweave with English

their flight and their song have enlivened me

Richly imaginative and intercontinental: the new poetry collection from the prizewinning poet and translator

and a letter which heals old wounds

The Silence by Gillian Clarke<br><b>POETRY BOOK SOCIETY RECOMMENDATION SPRING 2024</b> Penny Boxall Snippets of Yoruba interweave with'The days have no names. The day they count the dead,the day they closed the doors,turned off the lights. We're still here in the silence,hearing tree talk,the wind's secrets,the company of birds.' 'The Year of the Dead' The poems in Gillian Clarke's The Silence begin during lockdown, whose silences Clarke listens so attentively that other voices emerge. As the book progresses, that silence deepens, in the poems about her mother and childhood, about