These new poems delve into an imagined world of science and technology: from the early twentieth-century ‘cloud camera’ of the title, to Herschel’s ‘comet sweeper’ telescope and Florence Nightingale’s diagram of hospital deaths. There are poems about the first balloon flight made by a woman, how Braille was invented, and the effects of laughing-gas and static electricity. Dream-like, the poems celebrate and lament our endless human fascination with ‘what the terrestrial body can stand, / at what point the mind turns itself inside out.’
Cloud Camera features poems commended in 2011 at the Cardiff International (‘Glass’), the Bridport (‘Lecture’) and the Mslexia (‘Ballomania’) Poetry Competitions.
“Splendidly compelling.”
Philip Gross & Don Paterson
“Her poems are vivid, edgy and accomplished.”
Helen Dunmore
"The most intelligent and thrilling book of poetry I've seen in several years."
Michael Hulse
Lesley Saunders is the author of several books and pamphlets, including Her Leafy Eye (Two Rivers, 2009). Her poems appear in magazines like the London Review of Books, Mslexia, the Rialto and Staple. She was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 1999, and won the Manchester Poetry Prize in 2008.