Rock as Gloss by Mark Goodwin

Divided into four ‘compasses’, Mark Goodwin‘s sixth full-length collection offers a variety of approaches to ‘the rock in hand’ (whether gritstone or slate), or the fell under foot (whether on or off the map), and also enacts a dialogue with the culture and literature of climbing and fell-walking, speaking to (and through) Menlove Edwards, Ted Hughes, Coleridge and others. The poems and fictions of Rock as Gloss navigate imaginary and actual journeys through textures of movement and stillness, setting down lines ‘touched by gravity’.

‘These written routes are remarkable in scale, ambition and content. I’ve not read anything quite like this book.’ — Andrew Greig