Paul Mills
Voting for Spring
978-1-906613-16-7
£9.95
Published August 2010, Smith/Doorstop Books
Paul Mills was born in 1948. He was Gregory Fellow in Poetry at Leeds University
1976-78, and is currently Lecturer in the School of
Literature Studies, College of Ripon and York St John, York. He has had
three previous poetry collections published by Carcanet. Two of his
plays have been performed, at the Royal National Theatre and at West
Yorkshire Playhouse. Paul was the overall winner in the 1998 Book &
Pamphlet Competition.Central to the title poem of Voting for Spring is the long human struggle for survival against ice and cold. The poem makes contact with our present climate crisis, as well as suggesting a dimension which is more personal.
The keynote of Paul Mills’s new book is affirmation, but also uncertainty – a day and night experience for the speaker of ‘Women in a Munitions Factory’, from a group of poems based on archive film. His reaction to his daughter’s psychiatric illness and her recovery is the subject of the powerful poem sequence, ‘21/2001’.
Together these poems reflect his ability to move between the remote and everyday, to combine intense vividness with philosophical insight.
‘Paul Mills’ poems are confident, perceptive, entertaining and assured.’ — Ian Parks, PQR
‘Mature, philosophical and adventurous work… Paul Mills strikes me as one of the few poets writing today who is fully prepared not to play safe.’ — Paul Munden, PN Review
The Poetry Business receives financial assistance from Arts Council England.
