Carcanet Press signs Clarke's 14th 'scrupulously musical' poetry collection

Carcanet Press has signed the 14th poetry collection from the former National Poet of Wales Gillian Clarke.

Michael Schmidt, managing director, acquired world rights directly from the author for The Silence which will be published in March 2024.

The collection will explore nature, the seasons and Welsh history, family connections and the First World War. Clarke initially began penning The Silence during the Covid-19 lockdowns: "In these scrupulous, musical poems, Clarke finds consolation in how silence makes room for memory and for the company of the animal – and bird-life which surrounds us. These poems, compulsively returning to key images and formative moments, echo and bring back other ways of living to the book’s present moment."

Schmidt commented: "Of all the poems that grew out of lockdown, Gillian Clarke’s are especially vivid because they occur within her wonderful Welsh landscapes, and always with a sense of her readership acquired over many years […] These poems encompass the big silences that lockdown made familiar to most of us. Yet as always she is scrupulously musical, and she realises how memory can fill solitude and silence with a wealth of recoveries."