Sarajevo Roses

Overview

Sarajevo Roses is Rory Waterman's second collection of poems. From the start we are in the company of a poet on the move. On sleeper trains, in cars and on foot, Waterman takes us into Mediterranean Europe, to Palma's Bellver Castle, to Venice, to Krujë, to the Italian ghost-town Craco, and to St Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, where 'selfie-sticks dance before us at the altar'. Sarajevo's 'neatened muddle of terracotta and concrete' is twinned with the 'church spires and rain-bright roofs' of the poet's former hometown, Lincoln. The Sarajevo rose of the book's title—a mortar crater filled with red resin, in remembrance—is less an overarching symbol here than one example of the past inscribed upon the present—culturally in our architecture, individually on our bodies—and of the instinct to preserve wounds as a mark of respect, or warning. Surrounded by the war-shaped, memorial landscapes of Europe, the poet is faced by those smaller wars and memorials one carries within, marks left by lovers, friends, relations, and past selves.

Reviews

'Rory Waterman write poems of the kind there'll always be a need for.' Alan Jenkins, Literary Editor of the TLS 'Great poetry, but poetry to be read with a health warning.' Belinda Cooke, Stride 'By just picking his words with an almost scientific exactitude he makes a poem that is meditative and unforced.' The Irish Examiner 'Waterman […] is at once restrained and assured. He has a fine eye for a poem's architecture, playing with symmetry, taking pleasure in the shape of the page, and he demonstrates a remarkably good ear.' John Greening, The Warwick Review

Author Biography

Rory Waterman was born in Belfast in 1981, grew up in rural Lincolnshire, and lives in Nottingham, where he is Senior Lecturer in English at Nottingham Trent University. His first collection of poetry, Tonight the Summer's Over, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Prize. He is also the editor of W.H. Davies, The True Traveller.