Half-Life is a riveting new collection full of family dramas, global warming and conversations with Death. The poems swing between Mexico City, New York, the Peloponnese, a Staffordshire village and home, engaging with the various beauties to be found in art, nature and the church. Then, in an extended sequence, Death relates stories of her encounters with the world’s peoples and cultures.
“He writes with a controlled passion... using sophisticated effects to locate the significant and develop its larger emotional truth.”
John Levett
“Compelling and moving.”
Poetry Review on The Secret History
Michael Hulse was born in 1955 in England, and lived for 25 years in Germany before returning in 2002 to teach at the University of Warwick. His poetry has won the National Poetry Competition and the Bridport Poetry Prize (twice), as well as Eric Gregory and Cholmondeley Awards. His most publications are the poetry collection The Secret History (Arc, 2009) and a translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Penguin Classics, 2009). He co-edited The New Poetry, the bestselling Bloodaxe anthology and GCSE set text (1993), and the Ebury anthology The 20th Century in Poetry (2011). He lives in Stafford.
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