Poetry
Richard Price – Small World (Carcanet)
Our final shortlisted author is in the poetry category, and has been described as having, ‘an amazing arc of narrative and imagery and richness’ and John Kinsella of the Manhattan Review says ‘Price has given late modernism an injection of humanity it has long required.’ Click here to find out more and vote for Richard.
About the Book
Small World tells a story of the changing relationship between a father and his two daughters, one severely disabled, a “mermaid in a wheelchair”, the other discovering the difference of her elder sister, the “moon” to her “earth”. Each succeeding poem gathers further telling detail as the father listens and observes with affection and surprise the strange world they inhabit, gradually reflecting on his own contrasting childhood. Finally, the book ends with a shock experience that brings all that has gone before into sharp focus.
About the Author
Richard Price was born in 1966 and grew up in Renfrewshire. He is known as a lyrical poet of love and family with a sensibility that balances tragedy with comedy in ways that are both touching and surprising. A curator for over twenty years, from 2003 to 2010 he was Head of Modern British Collections at the British Library in London, curating exhibitions which included ’Migrant and the Possibility of Poetry’ (centred on the poetry of the 1960s and artist’s books) and ‘The Page is Printed’, about Ted Hughes’s small press publications. Since 2005 the major independent publisher Carcanet has published his poetry. His collections include Greenfields, shortlisted for the Sundial Scottish Arts Council Poetry Prize, Lucky Day shortlisted for the Whitbread (now Costa) Poetry Prize, and Rays, shortlisted for a Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Award. He was European Poet in Residence at the University of Coimbra in 2013. He is Head of Content and Research Strategy at the British Library.
What Richard says about being a finalist for the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards
On being the 2013 Poetry Winner: “I am delighted to win the Poetry category in the Scottish Book Awards and to be a Finalist. Small World is a breakthrough book for me – the first time I feel I’ve managed to write a poetry collection that tells a braided story, poem by poem, across a whole book, as if it were an unfolding novel or film, and with I hope a strong sense of suspense – in part the mystery of fatherhood and of children.
“I’ve been shortlisted for major prizes before but it’s just so good to have this step-up in ambition recognised in this way, and it is testament to the faith my publisher Carcanet have had in me over the years. It’s also a tribute to the amazing people I’ve loosely based the book on, their character must somehow shine. There are great writers whose work I love who haven’t got through to be a Finalist this time, so I am particularly proud.”
Click to watch the animation of Richard talking about Small World
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