Collected Poems, Volume 2

The second volume of Frances Presley's Collected Poems, 2004 to 2020, brings together a distinctive body of work, representing a major achievement in modern and postmodern poetry and prose, projects and collaborations. Feminism and political commitment are still evident, but ecology and ecopoetics are foregrounded. It includes Stone Settings and Longstones which explores Neolithic stones on Exmoor, in collaboration with visual poet Tilla Brading; the playful An Alphabet for Alina, with artist Peterjon Skelt; as well Halse for Hazel, which received an Arts Council award; and the Ada Lovelace project, Ada Unseen. There is also a new sequence, Channels, on shorelines and parallel coasts. 'As these volumes attest, Frances Presley's is the poetry of the artisan, authentic in the sharpest sense of the word: rare, inventive, its original beauties edged and tempered by the traditional skills in which they germinated. Nomadic in theme, sinewy of thought, filigree in habit, this oeuvre rummages with discriminating care among the cultural-linguistic currents and debris complicating the experiencing of place, distant or proximal, prehistoric or contemporary, empty or inhabited.' -Alice Entwhistle