Description: Winner of the Eyelands Award for Best Poetry Book of 2019
The Nurseryman is a verse novel told in polyphony as the collected account of a 17th Century voyage to Meta Incognita - the absolutely unknown ice-land at the top of the world. A composite of original sources and collected accounts of medieval voyages, The Nurseryman is a postmodern travel compendium that explores the hidden, magical worlds within our own. "AN EXTRAORDINARY DEBUT THAT COMBINES THE AWED WONDER OF EARLY SEAFARERS WITH A FRESHNESS AND BUOYANCY THAT IS ESSENTIALLY 21ST CENTURY. ALTERNATING BETWEEN THE LATE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 'FRAGMENTARY RECORDS OF A ROOTE GATHERER, PRACTICED OF ALCHEMICAL CRAFT & IN THE SPIRITUAL USE OF FRUIT TREES...', LYRICAL MEDITATIONS ON THE BEAUTY OF NATURE, AND NOTES ON SOME OF THE MARVELS ENCOUNTERED DURING THE VOYAGE (SUCH AS HOW FEMALE WHALES ARE SNARED BY THEIR PROTECTIVENESS TOWARDS THEIR OFFSPRING), THE NURSERYMAN TAKES US ON A STARTLINGLY ORIGINAL ODYSSEY THAT IS AT ONCE AN HOMAGE TO THE PAST AS WELL AS BEING A PRESCIENT 'FABLE FOR THE PRESENT."- JENNY LEWIS, AUTHOR OF GILGAMESH RETOLD
Brief description: Arthur Allen recently completed a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford. His first poetry pamphlet, Here Birds Are, was published by Green Bottle Press, London, in 2017. Poems from the collection won the Madison Review Prize and The Mississippi Review Prize 2017, and featured in the Amsterdam Quarterly, The Irish Literary Review, The Bombay Review, and The Indian Review. His poetry has also appeared previously in Elbow Room, Eyot, Cactus Heart Review, Wilderness House and Vayavya. An extract from THE NURSERYMAN will appear in Footnote: A Journal of Literary History, Vol. 4.