Modern fog

this wide-ranging and mercurial collection contains poems on landscapes, living rooms, love and pilgrimage, birds and animals, flowers, grandmothers, novelists and composers, car parks and coastal resorts - all interspersed with modern folk tales. at the centre of the book lies a striking twelve-part meditation on the medieval church of st. helen's in ranworth, norfolk - known as the 'cathedral of the broads'. by turns bucolic, elegiac or enquiring, emery's ludic poems depict our common experiences and anxieties - his conjured worlds always filled with mystery and beauty. "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"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"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