The Drey Skin - Paul Brookes

‘Paul Brookes’s poetry is notable both for its vital language, with rugged unsentimental dialect, cascades of imagery, and startling personifications, and for what it leaves unsaid. This mix of fullness and economy can throw sideways light on things, revealing oddities in commonplace experience and harsh wonders in the natural world.’

Paul Connolly

‘In his own inimitable style, Brookes explores connection – observing, uniting with and returning to Mother Earth; embracing his place in family, and encompassing the inevitability of love and loss; acknowledging his position in his locality as witness and empath; and recognising his poetic relationship with language which he shapes like clay. He is both spectator and subject, unafraid to examine self, contemplative at even the darkest moments. He views life in its entirety, unearthing memory, ties, demise and isolation, ultimately extracting his personal response to what is without, and within, yet controlling the emotion of resignation, sadness and exhaustion as he crystallises each experience.’

Helen Laycock