Black Shiver Moss

Overview

Graham Mort's masterly 10th collection of poetry, Black Shiver Moss (Seren), is packed with poems about his native northern counties of Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cumbria, as well as stunning evocations of elsewhere: Africa, Southern Spain, France, Italy. A prize-winning short story author as well as a poet, Mort's rich, concentrated style thrives on detailed observations of the natural world, their deep feeling harnessed to a finely-honed technique.

Reviews

"The work in his latest, Cusp, is as tightly controlled and well-observed as its predecessors. Mort is not a people's poet, His poetry has no immediacy, belly laughs, or political diatribe. It is fluid and dense, a rich verse drawn from his observing the natural world. Mort is out there, deep among the fells, following the becks as they course down their gullies...The book finishes with a twenty-page tour-de-force, 'Electricity', where Mort, master of form and functionality, is at the top of his powers. It's a poem that sparks its way through world knowledge and its consequences, electricity, as the grand metaphor, 'call me the turning worm at the heart of matter/ I'm everywhere...' It held me." —Peter Finch, Poetry

Author Biography

Graham Mort was born in Lancashire and studied English at Liverpool University. He worked as a mill labourer, dairy operative and psychiatric nurse before training as a teacher. He taught in schools, colleges, prisons, special education and psychiatric units before becoming a freelance writer. He gained a doctorate from the University of Glamorgan and is now Professor of Creative Writing and Transcultural Literature at Lancaster University.