Description: The title poem of this collection chronicles the eighteenth-century trial of Captain John Bolton for the murder of his apprentice girl, Elizabeth Rainbow, in a small village in the north of England where Paul Munden has spent most of his life. The poem's reflection on life writing is complemented by other shadowings, and dark pastoral musings.
Brief description: Paul Munden is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Canberra, where he is also Program Manager for the International Poetry Studies Institute (IPSI). He is General Editor of Writing in Education and Writing in Practice, both published by the National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE), of which he is Director. He was reader for Stanley Kubrick from 1988-98. He has worked as conference poet for the British Council and edited Feeling the Pressure: Poetry and science of climate change (British Council, 2008). His collection of poems, Asterisk (Smith/Doorstop, 2011), is based on Shandy Hall, former home of Laurence Sterne. Analogue/Digital, a volume of his new and selected poems was published by Smith/ Doorstop in 2015. He has lived in Bulmer, North Yorkshire, for over 30 years, now dividing his time with work in Canberra.
Review Quotes:
In this complex and intricately constructed volume, lyric poems address sometimes difficult, sometimes bewildering aspects of human existence head on, and in surprising and scintillating ways. Paul Munden tantalises and beguiles us with rich evocations of the mysterious and the opaque, reminding us of the strangeness of life and the mystery at the core of what we know - Paul Hetherington