Reviews

Preserved traces of things - forms, language, memory - are what inform many of the poems in The Fossil-box. The volume is fascinated by the urgency of ground and belonging. Several pieces focus on the land- and seascapes around the author's home in Wales. At other places in the collection the 'abundant centre' of rediscovery is the Forest of Dean, a prolific site of formation and recollection, the 'slow lens' between childhood and adulthood, the source of the 'impending past'.There's a rare and intense musicality in 'The Fossil-Box'. Richard Marggraf Turley demonstrates a real appreciation of the sonic possibilities of English, and the delicious rolling cadences, reflecting 'the Severn's soluble tithes', of this book are to be relished.Here indeed is writing that deserves to be read aloud, springing from an acute awareness of history and what the poet owes to it. 'The Fossil-Box' is a marvellous exploration of roots and our inescapable ancestries.Robert Minhinnick