Publisher's Synopsis
The World Returning begins in an empty theatre and ends in the tomb of Tutankhamun. Between these thresholds, Lawrence Sail's new collection ranges from vivid memories of childhood and 'the oncoming past' to poems on subjects as diverse as the paintings of Alfred Wallis, an Indian journey, a stag beetle, and the theme of silence. These poems achieve a fine balance between dream and history, delight and unease, weighing the art of the possible against the encroachment of time. Peter Forbes has called Sail 'a lyric poet in the classic mould'. The World Returning adds to the achievement of Out of Land: New & Selected Poems (1992) and Building into Air (1995). These are poems 'haunted by disharmony, by a sense of edges and endings, the silence after music…marvellous exotic miniatures, enamelled models of perception' (TLS).
