Nightsongs for Gaia

<p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>'James Byrne's poetry has always been lyrically complex with a voice that is singular and instantly striking. What particularly impresses the reader of his </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Nightsongs for Gaia: New and Selected Poems</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> is its capaciousness. This book takes us on a journey from his youth via places of recent conflict such as Myanmar and Libya in a way that few contemporary writers across the globe can match. He makes most poets today look like they're jogging in a bathtub.'</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>ANTONY ROWLAND</span></p><p></p><p><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Nightsongs for Gaia: New and Selected Poems</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> spans over twenty years of James Byrne's poetic practice. Accomplished in both formal and innovative modes Byrne's poetry is visionary</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>attentive and curious encapsulating a global sensibility. Selecting from seven full collections and various pamphlets </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Nightsongs</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> brings together works unavailable in England until now. Here we encounter a poetics that works with communities to further consider a sense of self and otherness and is unique in its musicality. This volume celebrates the work of one of the</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>most gifted poets of his generation.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>'</span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Nightsongs for Gaia</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> presents alchemical fissures of a heart reduced to gold with no other substance to turn (in)to. A fiery presence of augury of premonition burns from the outset with a wary flame. Byrne has seen many places been many things and undergone visceral self-haunting in many guises. To say the </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Nightsongs</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> are oracular is to understate the poet's own sense of knowingness. Here exquisite beauty prevails.'</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>KIRSTEN NORRIE</span></p><p></p>