Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry
An Observer Book of the Year
A family lives with a horse; three riots are safely tucked in their beds; a tumbleweed pursues a career in comedy; the giant flag crossing a football crowd has a strange effect on those underneath; a raging fifty-foot poem spreads terror through a city... As always in Paul Farley’s work, the everyday and the cosmic are intertwined in surprising, funny, or unsettling ways. And as always, his poems inhabit and explore in-between, uncertain spaces; a Farley poem may contain recognizable objects and events but is always attentive to broader resonances.
When It Rained for a Million Years marks a new stage in the poet’s development, while exemplifying his unwavering belief in the music and form of language, and in the power of metaphorical transformation in the ways elegy, monologue, and pastoral intersect with our anxious, fragile age.
‘Farley’s strength, throughout his career, is the delicacy of his poems’ music, their gentle illumination and good humor, and this book is no exception’ – Poetry Book Society Bulletin
‘A gift for making the mundane seem magical’ – Observer
Pages: 96, Year of Publication: 0610, Dimensions: 15.2x15.2cm
