Modern Fog

Synopsis

Modern Fog is the first half of a two-book project Chris Emery completed with Wonder (Salt, 2025). A hymn to the Norfolk countryside and to family, it pays tribute to Emery's years in the county, mingling cherished personal memory with the wider world and its landscapes – wildlife on the Broads sits alongside a multi-storey car park with the same attentive, musical fluency.

These are elegiac, tough-minded poems of real originality and scope, earthy and exact even at their most dreamlike, written by a poet, in the words of one reviewer, 'at the top of his game'. Modern Fog embraces its own mist rather than trying to clear it – treating uncertainty as a way of seeing, and a source of potential illumination.

Readers who want to follow where that illumination leads should turn next to Wonder, the collection Emery wrote in its wake, which takes up the same attentiveness and turns it towards memory, history and the marvellous.

Praise for this Book

‘It’s as if these attentive, atmospheric, musical poems can light up everywhere: seascapes, edgelands, interiors, even a car park. Chris Emery’s art is at once earthy, spiritual, dreamlike and exact. So often, the language is irresistible: “Above us, in its immaculate empire, / a bird whirrs up and saves / its eyes for the militant hour.”’ —Moniza Alvi

‘Really, I admire it so much. It was almost a shock to read something so densely, richly packed with sounds and rhythms and words.’ —Niall Campbell

‘Made me think of Herbert and “The Altar” – a powerful contemplation of presence.’ —John Kinsella

‘Emery brings an unusually wide-ranging poetic vocabulary to the encounters in Modern Fog, depicting wildlife on the Norfolk Broads or a multi-storey car park with equal fluency. These are elegiac, tough-minded poems of marked originality and scope.’ —Anne Rouse

Reviews of this Book

‘Chris Emery’s work is crammed with surprises: he is at once human and metaphysical, a sharp observer compelled to question.’ —Peter Pegnall

‘Chris Emery is the former director of operations at The Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham – a pilgrimage site – and hiking, meditation, and discovery are all present in his new work.’ —Molly Nicholas, Lynn News

‘A local poet has uncovered the mystery, history and beauty of Norfolk in his latest poetry collection – making some fascinating personal discoveries while writing the book.’ —Adam Barker, Eastern Daily Press

‘[Emery’s] continued fascination with Norfolk’s natural beauty and medieval churches has been a source of inspiration for Modern Fog, a collection of musical poems capturing the essence of Norfolk’s animals, birds, and landscapes.’ —Dil Bar Irshad, BNN Breaking

‘The final poem, ‘The Legacy,’ records the removal of an empty wasps’ nest. In the transformative effect of genuine poetry, the nest becomes a human life… Whether we believe in such a place is, with writing as good as this, hardly the point, appealing as it does, through powerful imagery to a human longing for continuation in the face of what we think we know of death.’ —Martyn Crucefix, Everybody’s Reviewing

‘Emery is adept at taking unexpected twists and turns, surprising and delighting us as, despite his chosen route, he somehow always leads us back home.’ —Rupert Loydell, International Times

‘With this collection, as it follows Emery’s own path, it may be that intuitions of spirituality in sacred spaces become the unthinkable that is experienced, shaped and shared.’ —Jonathan Evens, Tears in the Fence

‘This is a beautiful collection of poems – Modern Fog is the work of an important poet at the top of his game – someone who can write about life and death with a sensitivity, an insight and a wisdom that is rare in contemporary poetry.’ —Tim Relf

‘A gifted poet getting better and better with age. For me had echoes of the great James Wright.’ —Neil Campbell

‘The author is an impressive word conjurer, evoking vivid imagery that rewards repeated reading.’ —Jackie Law, neverimitate