Set in Belfast and Yorkshire, Italy and Dublin, Marking the Lambs deals with exile and loss in its many forms. Perceptive, generous and, above all, compassionate poems.
"His poems are accurate reminders of what really matters in our relationships with each other and the natural world."
Jean Spackland
'Marking the Lambs'
Let me show you an island
where a door was torn from its hinges
to carry the young fisherman
home to his wake. How, a week after
the boat went down, they brought him
to his mother, knowing the pattern
she knit into his geansai,
like the blue mark she daubed on her lambs
so the island and the world
would know what was hers.
James Caruth was born in Belfast. His first collection, A Stones Throw, was published in 2007, followed by Dark Peak in 2008. His poem, 'The Deposition', won the Sheffield Poetry Prize in 2011.