Blackbird Singing at Dusk by Wendy Pratt is an illuminating and lyrical exploration of place within nature; of Northern rural working-class lives, the female body, and of the ancestors and history still close to the surface, just beneath where our feet touch the earth. Moving through both landscapes and human lives, these poems weigh the impact of loss and consider the circular, deep nature of time itself; how lifetimes can be measured – whether in jackdaw, beech tree or even glacier time.

From the silent sentinels of boulders to peels of birdsong “stopping the world”, Wendy Pratt’s archaeological attention to detail draws us into an intimate elegy, mindful of the connections of earth and people, the living and the dead. The wide horizons of her poems weave the heartbeat of working days and the rich inheritances of love in scribbled notes and domestic prayers – all that remains behind long after, marking us with grief for a lost parent or a baby daughter. These remarkable poems of solace consider what it is to endure and find reassurance in a rural land “quartered by barn owls and kestrels,” with its ever-shifting seasons and skies, its permanence of stone and soil.