Tripping Over Clouds

Burnett Lucy

"Tripping Over Clouds" issues a bold challenge to Ezra Pound's maxim to 'go in fear of abstractions'. Underpinning this is a re-imagining of abstraction as a prior state of possibility from which the world and ourselves are constantly re-emerging – as abstraction to, not from.

Both philosophical and fresh, the poetry dances across, off and back into the page, like the mountain runner in its opening section: 'to talk about / the pleasure principle / of falling downhill fastly.' Lucy Burnett's second collection ranges from the hills, to questions of love, and responses to twentieth century abstract art. It ends with poems which ask what identity means any longer in the current political climate. "Tripping Over Clouds" marks the consolidation of an original voice in British poetry. This is poetry about, and of, beauty.

About the Author

Lucy Burnett was born and grew up in South West Scotland, and lived and worked in Edinburgh. She is now based in the North of England. She has strong environmental and visual arts interests. She is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Leeds Beckett University.

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