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When It Rained for a Million Years
- Author
- Paul Farley
- Narrator
- Paul Farley
- Publisher
- Pan Macmillan
- Publish Date
- 13 March 2025
- Run Time
- 1 hour 30 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
Read by the author, Paul Farley.
A family cohabits with a horse; three riots are tucked up safely in their beds; a tumbleweed takes up a career in comedy; the giant flag crossing a football crowd has a strange effect on those underneath; a rampaging fifty-foot poem brings terror to a city… As always in Paul Farley’s work, the quotidian and the cosmic are braided together in surprising, funny, or disconcerting ways. And as always, his poems inhabit and explore intermediate, uncertain spaces, a fertile terrain found between the obscurity of the cave and the light of knowledge linked to power.
A Farley poem may be filled with recognisable objects and events, but is always alert to wider resonances. This gathering represents a new stage of development in the poet’s work, while exemplifying his unwavering faith in the music and shape of language, in the power of metaphorical transformation and a renewal of elegy, monologue, and the pastoral, in the various ways they navigate and intersect with our anxious, brittle age.
Critics Review
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You can never predict how – or where – a Paul Farley poem is going to land . . . he has his own wit and singular insights
Guardian
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Startlingly imaginative . . . The acrobatic leaps in Farley’s imagination make for a thrilling ride, and [. . .] “sends a ripple through your heart"
Observer
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Farley's strength, throughout his career, is the delicacy of his poems' music, their soft lighting and good humour, and this book is no exception
Poetry Book Society Bulletin
User Reviews
No reviews yet.
Details
- Author
- Paul Farley
- Narrator
- Paul Farley
- Duration
- 1 hour 30 minutes
- Release Date
- 13 March 2025
- ISBN
- 9781035068692
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Pan Macmillan
- Genre
- Poetry / poems by individual poets, Modern and contemporary poetry / poems
Synopsis
Read by the author, Paul Farley.A family cohabits with a horse; three riots are tucked up safely in their beds; a tumbleweed takes up a career in comedy; the giant flag crossing a football crowd has a strange effect on those underneath; a rampaging fifty-foot poem brings terror to a city… As always in Paul Farley’s work, the quotidian and the cosmic are braided together in surprising, funny, or disconcerting ways. And as always, his poems inhabit and explore intermediate, uncertain spaces, a fertile terrain found between the obscurity of the cave and the light of knowledge linked to power.A Farley poem may be filled with recognisable objects and events, but is always alert to wider resonances. This gathering represents a new stage of development in the poet’s work, while exemplifying his unwavering faith in the music and shape of language, in the power of metaphorical transformation and a renewal of elegy, monologue, and the pastoral, in the various ways they navigate and intersect with our anxious, brittle age.
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