Published August 2022
An exceptional debut collection by this gifted, compassionate poet whose haunting words take flight into the very soul of the reader. The elegies are so deeply felt, they could be anyone’s as the poet is summoned
from this shadow life
to open sky,
a pen to write.
As A A Marcoff says, ‘Barton sings from the whole heart’.
‘Elizabeth Barton’s poems are like the linnet’s wings she evokes in the opening piece of this stunning collection – delicate but capable of taking flight. She finds striking beauty in ordinary moments and records joy and sadness with great compassion. These poems are small inventories of what we treasure – Barton summons us from our shadow lives and gives us words to soar.’
Tamar Yoseloff
‘Elizabeth Barton has a unique voice – rooted in her love for the land, the earth, and also for her family and the father she has lost. The poems in this pamphlet are carefully crafted, and the beauty of the language, and the rare image or turn of phrase, make a music very like a song ‘rich as honeycomb’, or like a bird that is singing of the world – a world of searing grief and loss and pain, but also of ‘jasmine flowers’ and a sublime ‘iridescence’. It is through nature that she has found the words to articulate her grief over her father’s death, and to make sorrow a way of singing and an art. Barton sings from the whole heart.’
A A Marcoff