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Here we will feature work we believe deserves your attention.Currently in the spotlight is Life Class, the new collection of poetry by Glyn Hughes.

Here’s an extract from a new essay by Ian Parks called Catching the Gleam, the poetry of Glyn Hughes:

“I first encountered Glyn Hughes’ poetry in 1979 when I read Best of Neighbours, his New and Selected Poems. I was twenty and looking for a poetry that spoke directly to my own experience. In Hughes I found a clear and uncompromising voice, a transformative lyrical gift and a formal grittiness which immediately set him apart from most of his contemporaries. Hughes’ background was rural, mine industrial: both working class. It was a seminal moment and some of the enthusiasm that gripped me then returned on reading Life Class, his moving autobiography in verse. A glance at the list of Hughes’ publications reveals that a gap of twenty-six years separates the publication of Best of Neighbours and his next collection, Dancing Out of the Dark Side in 2005. Hughes, of course had been far from silent, establishing a reputation for himself as a fine novelist (Where I Used to Play on the Green, The Hawthorn Goddess, The Rape of the Rose) and writer of autobiography (Millstone Grit, which deals with his relationship with the Pennines and Fair Prospects, which is concerned with his experience of Greece). The impulse to poetry remained in his sensibility and in his keen identification with the characters and landscapes he chose to write about. Comparisons with other poet-novelists such as Hardy, Graves, and (particularly) Lawrence are inevitable but Hughes is entirely his own man and the poetic temperament presides over everything he’s written. So it was particularly fitting that Hughes returned so triumphantly to verse in Life Class in rendering his experiences, memories and observations. Whether dealing with his life-long empathy with nature, his childhood in rural Cheshire or his encounter with another culture in Greece, Hughes informed his verse with a sinuous quality and, remarkably, sought to recreate rather than merely recollect the sights and sounds, passions and pains, triumphs and despairs that have made up this singular life.”

Life Class, £13.95 ISBN: 1 904886 98 3, is a 5,000 line autobiographical poem. From Shoestring Press, this is a beautifully designed and produced volume of 126 pages.

Read more about Glyn Hughes at his website www.glynhughes.co.uk