House Anthems - Ralph Dartford

‘Not far away, outside a lighted house.’The final collection in Ralph Dartford's 'Recovery Trilogy' sees the poet meditating on the tragic death of his beloved brother, Joseph, and how he lived in the mythical house of England: a nation of waving flags seen through soft focus sunlight. Here are his people, their misfitting tales that scratch and count the bricks of a private island imprisoned within its own walls, rituals and loneliness.Warm and lyrical, visceral in its fury, but finally resolute in its ceaseless quest for love and tenderness, this concluding collection dances the demand for better days – that we all must have the opportunity to recover and sing together. Whatever the cost to the crumbling mortar of old Albion."House Anthems is both an elegy to a beloved brother and a touching homage to the inevitability of time passing within our homes and towns. These poems are shot through with a pulse which serves to comfort in times of grief: ‘we will hear music that stitches our reasons to beat again’. A hugely insightful and thoughtful collection." Katy Mahon"House Anthems feels like a soundtrack to winter, to grief and the memory of heat. Finished in the way the past is, but unfinished in the way that the past is always just out of reach." Louise Fazackerley