These Silent Mansions

Sprackland,

£9.99

Graveyards are oases: places of escape, of peace and reflection. Each is a garden or nature reserve, but also a site of commemoration, where the past is close enough to touch: a liminal place, at the border of the living world. Jean Sprackland’s prize-winning book, ‘Strands’, brought to life the histories of objects found on a beach. ‘These Silent Mansions’ is also an uncovering of individual stories: vivid, touching and intimately told. Sprackland travels back through her own life, revisiting graveyards in the ordinary towns and cities she has called home, seeking out others who lived, died and are remembered or forgotten there. With her poet’s eye, she makes chance discoveries among the stones and inscriptions: a notorious smuggler tucked up in a sleepy churchyard; ancient coins unearthed on a secret burial ground; a slow-worm basking in the sun.

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Publish Date: 04/02/2021

Description

‘A refreshingly original meditation… I wish I had written it myself’ Literary Review

Graveyards are oases: places of escape, peace and reflection. Liminal sites of commemoration, where the past is close enough to touch. Yet they also reflect their living community – how in our restless, accelerated modern world, we are losing our sense of connection to the dead.

Jean Sprackland – the prize-winning poet and author of Strands – travels back through her life, revisiting her once local graveyards. In seeking out the stories of those who lived and died there, remembered and forgotten, she unearths what has been lost.

Additional information

Weight 193 g
Dimensions 197 × 128 × 15 mm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Paperback

Pages

256

Language

English

Edition
Dewey

306.9 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K