Skated down heights

A name written in a frosty window pane, water slipping through the fingers, an old railway track overgrown with wild flowers: images of change and fragility populate the poems of Gerrit Sangers.

In a vivid, personal, clever collection, he confronts past betrayals, lost loves, barely concealed pain, the vision of a soulmate always just out of reach.
The sound and musicality of language are important, the very rhythm of a poem capturing the motion of a sledge hurtling down a hillside or the soulless pounding of factory machinery. As a Dutchman writing in English, Gerrit Sangers approaches language with a fresh eye, pulling out words which can be taken for granted and revealing them in a new light.

Sometimes painful, sometimes playful - Skated Down Heights is a book to read and re-read.