Emily Hasler

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Biographical note:  Emily Hasler was born in Felixstowe, Suffolk and studied at the University of Warwick for a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing and an MA in Romanticisms. She now lives in London. In 2009 she won second prize in the Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition. Her poems have appeared in various publications, including the Rialto, Poetry Salzburg, Warwick Review and Horizon Review, and have been anthologised in Dove Release, Birdbook, Clinic 2 and Herbarium. Her poems will also appear in The Salt Book of Younger Poets and The Best British Poetry 2011. She is a regular poetry reviewer for Warwick Review.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844718672
ISBN:  9781844718672
Author:  Emily Hasler
Title:  natural histories
Series:  Salt Modern Voices
Product class:  BF
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  DCF
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  15-Oct-11
Extent:  36pp
Height:  198 mm
Width:  129 mm
Thickness:  3 mm
Weight:  54 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  IP
Price:  GBP 6.5
Price:  USD 9.95
Rights:  World

Short description/annotation:  Nature is an unavoidable force in these poems, providing space for meditations on our knowledge of self and other. How do our environments and pasts affect us? How did we become? These poems have their own organic forms, adapted to purpose. Precision and sentiment give this debut force and vitality.

Main description:  Nature is not so much the subject as an unavoidable force in these poems, providing space and fodder for meditations on our knowledge of self and other. Here, the small histories that complement or contradict grand narratives come to the fore. Hasler adopts the stance of the naturalist, seeking to observe and collect, but with the imagination working alongside the eye. Along the way these poems confront questions of naming and categorising, and ask how our environments and our past affect us, and we them. How did we become? Change and adaptation is the key here. The manner of investigation never shies away from the fact that nature can be both deeply personal and unfamiliar. Rather it embraces both of these aspects and uses them to construct its own narrative, one of shaping and discovery. Much like the subjects contained within them, poems have their own organic forms, adapted to purpose. It is this adaptation combined with precision and sentiment that give this debut force and vitality.

Table of contents:
Lubbock’s Box
Rhododendron
St Jerome and the Chaffinch
Maldives
The Cormorants
Badger
Natural History
The Safe Harbour
Great Tit
Pigeon
Snow
To a Woodpecker
Belle Isle
Species
A Flightless Bird
The Paragliders
Echolocation
Familiar Things
Notes

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Excerpt from book:  

Pigeon

At first, I thought it the most delicious noise.
Lodged in our loft it held forth its music,
one strain, over and over — as though there were nothing
in the world but song, babies, cake and nappies.

Friday, I’m half mad and cannot get out of bed.
The bird is nesting somewhere in our insulation,
perhaps she is so fat she cannot get out.
I wonder if she will ever leave.

By next week I will know nothing.
My heart will thrill like a tuning fork,
and I will issue forth one sound forever — 
feeling love, love and love and love.

Unpublished endorsement:  Hasler has real gifts: her observations are sharp, her language is crisp, and her music is beguiling.

Paul Batchelor

Unpublished endorsement:  Hasler is one of those poets: her tender, intelligent eye illuminates the real. I always read her work with pleasure.

Emma Jones

Unpublished endorsement:  There's a wonderful exuberance about the poems in Emily Hasler's ‘Natural Histories'. Her joy in language is as clear as her pleasure in her encounters with animals and birds, whether existing or extinct. Her creatures resist being held by simple definitions as she strives to glimpse new truths, extending the confines of purely scientific research. As nature writing redefines its parameters, Emily Hasler is an exciting poet for the future.

Andrew Forster

Review quote:  scrupulously attentive poems (that) compare favourably with the Elizabeth Bishop of “Sandpiper”

John Mole
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