Pilgrim Tongues - Tapa blanda

Dense, rich and complex this collection draws on a fertile heritage of myth and legend, evoking lands long forgotten and landscapes rendered new by this most modern and lyrical of voices.

The high energy of Cliff Forshaw s poems makes me think particularly of Donne and the other Metaphysicals: argument, wit, erudition and force of feeling all working to convey an authentic vision of the world we live in. - Christopher Reid

Like Ovid, Forshaw has real wit as a poet... this is the work of a poet skilled in his art. - Michael Nobbs, The Welsh Books Council

Cliff Forshaw left school at sixteen and worked in an abattoir before studying painting at art college and developing an interest in languages and literatures, which he studied sporadically at Warwick, Cambridge and London. Since then he has lived in Snowdonia, and taught at Bangor, Sheffield, and now Hull University. Cliff has been International Writer-in-Residence at Hobart, Tasmania, winner of the Welsh Academi John Tripp Award, Blue Nose Poet-of-the-Year, twice a Hawthornden Writing Fellow and a Djerassi Resident Artist in California. He is an experienced performer of his work: collaborations include performances of Trans set to music by Roddie Harris and Bethan Jones. He has published translations from a number of languages, and written widely on translation, myth, contemporary and Renaissance poetry.