Faithful, Cliff Ashcroft's first book of poems, maintains what Penelope Shuttle calls a 'characteristic tone of reserved epiphanies, a stillness within process'. It is a book of intimate, often elegiac poems, ranging widely in place and history from Spain during the civil war to England under Roman occupation. Often the most vivid localities are imaginary; the Greek underworld and its shadow citizens, the trials of those close to gospel events, and our own curious contemporary hells and heavens. Faithful engages in its five sections with various aspects of faith and creates a distinctive atmosphere—ghostly, still, as though the various voices spoke close and quiet, into your own ear.
