Ruth Carr’s poems explore the lives of two women who lived contemporaneously but never met – Dorothy Wordsworth and Mary Ann McCracken. The poems reflect how they lived their lives alongside their more famous brothers, with Mary Ann’s political strength carrying her through tragedy and Dorothy’s calmer “foxglove feeling” for life.

‘Try to unhinge who you are’, Ruth Carr says, and we are gently unhinged from our own time by the poems in this book, from a poet who can conjure the political resolution of Mary Ann McCracken as well as the ‘foxglove feel for things’ of Dorothy Wordsworth.  Reading Ruth Carr we encounter a poet whose integrity, her steady eye, have made her equal to the challenge of real lives, in a real past,  as a theme of poetry. – Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Professor (emeritus) School of English, Trinity College Dublin

‘How sensitively you respond to Dorothy’s writing. You have spare, tight use of language and offer the reader some lovely things. Altogether a warm and compassionate picture emerges’ – Pamela Woof, President of the Wordsworth Trust.

Condition: New paperback.