Spacecraft Voyager 1

Swirling like eddies in a river come the poems of Alice Oswald, who has quickly become one of the premier British poets writing today. Spacecraft Voyager 1 collects poetry from across her career—new poems, selections from her first and more recent books, and the entirety of her masterwork to date, Dart, winner of the 2002 T. S. Eliot Prize. Oswald’s speaker—always curious, often whimsical, sometimes brash—becomes the river itself, as she gives voice to the natural world and the denizens along the river Dart in Devonshire, in their unique dialects and occupations. For the first time, Spacecraft Voyager 1 introduces American readers to an essential new poet.

“Ms. Oswald’s is a mystical work, and when she writes you can hear the long heritage of English verse behind her—of Ted Hughes, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Dylan Thomas. Her poems are written with the deceptive casualness of a notebook, but they also have a rhythmical tightness; they are propulsive, forward-pulsing, knitting one line to another. This poet is acutely alive in the world.”—The Economist, for Woods, Etc.

“Oswald joins Ciaran Carson, Iain Sinclair, Ted Hughes, and ultimately Joyce himself as one of the great celebrants of the genius Loci, the spirit of place, or what the Irish call dinnseanchas, lovingly elaborated topographical lore…Oswald has soul in riverfuls.”—The Gaurdian, for Dart

“Alice Oswald is making a new kind of poetry…she is in the front rank of writers, in poetry and prose, who are not content to work only with what exists already.”—Jeanette Winterson