Hearing Voices by Ruth Bidgood

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Extract (Download)

In Hearing Voices we are transported to other times to literally hear the voices of people whose concerns resonate across centuries; voices made audible by Ruth Bidgood’s subtle skill, precise poetic ear and admirable lightness of touch. In these apparently quiet narrative poems there beats a pulse that time and distance have not silenced; revelatory moments speaking out of ordinary lives.

Found poems are passages from letters, diaries, wills, deeds- in fact any prose source— which without their writers’ knowledge or intention make themselves known as poems. Their form is free, but their rhythm (different from, stronger than, that of what we think of as prose): their unity: and often an intensity, an emotional charge encouraged the writer to ‘lift’ them from their setting and edit them into lines of verse which bring out their poetic qualities. Other poems in this collection are partly inventions, but make use of ‘found’ material (situations, speeches, phrases) from the original document, this material forming a key element in the poem. These elegant, poignant poems confirm Ruth Bidgood as one of the most talented poets writing in Wales today.

Praise for Hearing Voices

A most memorable collection which adds a whole new dimension to our understanding of Ruth Bidgood’s work. In an unobtrusive but in the end unforgettable way it gathers together many of the most contradictory aspects of our human experience… Here we find the poetic gift of this writer, her distinctive signature is to be found across the whole of this remarkable collection of poetic voices from different times and places.

A.M. Allchin

(Photo by Liz Flemming-Williams)

Ruth Bidgood was born of a North Welsh father and a West Country mother in Seven Sisters, Glamorgan. Educated Port Talbot and Oxford University, in the 60s, after many years away (in Oxford, Alexandria and the London area) she returned to Wales and settled in Powys, where she began writing poetry and local history. Her eighth collection of poems was published by Seren in 2000: the second received a Welsh Arts Council award; the sixth and seventh were shortlisted for the Welsh Arts Council Book of the Year Award in 1993 and 1997. Ruth has had poems and historical articles in various journals.