A Book of Songs by Chris Athorne | Poetry Salzburg Pamphlet Series 43 Anne Michaels McClatchy)

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providing a shoulder to cry on or a helping hand

animals and farming life

There as a child the poet discovered an incised potsherd: 'Was that the day when antiquity / - The place where all is over and done - / Took ineluctable hold of me

Alive to the ethical pressures of a precarious world

A Book of Songs by Chris Athorne | Poetry Salzburg Pamphlet Series 43 Anne Michaels McClatchy)"When I accepted one of Chris Athorne's poems for publication in Into Poetry, I noted in a commentary that its tone was both celebratory and melancholic. Seeing a wider selection of Athorne's work in A Book of Songs, published by Poetry Salzburg, I find more celebration than melancholy in his poetry. At its best it achieves a pure music. One senses behind the lyricism a powerful intellect momentarily suspending its analytical rigour so that the poet,