Overwintering - Pippa Little

Overwintering is coming through, emerging into the light of a new season. Pippa Little's book explores what survives and grows from the dark energies of winter, night and loss, from the buried past and the imagination's depths. Landscapes speak of ancient violences and hold the hope of resolution. Love survives; the richness of the world replenishes.

Little's poems have a sensual delight in qualities of light and texture, in imagined realities and the fantastical real. 'Hope is winter light,' she writes, 'is day arriving, numb and slow.'

Cover image: Pierre Cordier, Clich-verre 1958 'Nv'. Reproduced by kind permission of the artist

Pippa Little was born in East Africa, raised in Scotland, and now lives in Northumberland. She has worked in editing, literacy and higher education and has a PhD in contemporary women's poetry from London University. Her first collection, The Spar Box, came out in 2006 and was a PBS Pamphlet Choice. Winner of an Eric Gregory Award, The Norman MacCaig Centenary Prize, The Andrew Waterhouse Northern Promise Award and the Scotsman Haiku Prize, she has travelled extensively in central Europe.

'There's a quiet courage here. Meaning dwells in the clear images of sense-perception but transcends them too. The real is fleet, elusive: but when it earths itself in this world, it is decidedly womanly. There's an unexpected laughter, rueful, sly. This poetry will hold.'
Gillian Allnutt

'Richly imagined, wide-ranging and subtly musical, Overwintering is a most welcome collection.'
Sean O'Brien