Displaying a love of the patterns and cadences of the English language, this first collection by Gill Learner explores and examines crafts, technologies, painting and music. It also reflects on growing up and motherhood, and imaginatively retells legends, myths and superstitions.
"These diverse, amusing, sometimes chilling, entirely honest poems speak from the heart to the heart. Many are workbased and hold that undertow of regret for things past, good people, lives undervalued, probably gone for ever. There is anger here and always an unwavering belief in and respect for working people. This is poetry to savour."
Mavis Cheek
"What is striking about The Agister’s Experiment is the way poems lift off from a base of precise knowledge into the imagination, the life or work of an individual..."
Myra Schneider
Gill Learner retired from teaching Printing Studies at Berkshire School of Art & Design in 1999 with the intention of writing. In October 2000 she won a limerick competition on the theme of time in The Independent with the entry: “It will pass, it can heal, it may fly; / ours to stall for, or play for, or buy. / we can save, serve or kill it; / waster, mark, call or kill it. / But it’s up at the moment we die.” Since then, her poetry has been published in Poetry News, Acumen, Envoi, Orbis, Smiths Knoll and Tears in the Fence, and read on Radio 3. She won the Hamish Canham Prize in 2008. In 2009 she became one of Shetland Library’s ‘Bards in the bog’, had a poem accepted for the Polesworth Poetry Trail in north Warwickshire, and was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, highly commended at the Petra Kenney competition, and named a finalist in the Aesthetica Creative Works competition.
"These diverse, amusing, sometimes chilling, entirely honest poems speak from the heart to the heart. Many are workbased and hold that undertow of regret for things past, good people, lives undervalued, probably gone for ever. There is anger here and always an unwavering belief in and respect for working people. This is poetry to savour."
Mavis Cheek
"What is striking about The Agister’s Experiment is the way poems lift off from a base of precise knowledge into the imagination, the life or work of an individual..."
Myra Schneider
Gill Learner retired from teaching Printing Studies at Berkshire School of Art & Design in 1999 with the intention of writing. In October 2000 she won a limerick competition on the theme of time in The Independent with the entry: “It will pass, it can heal, it may fly; / ours to stall for, or play for, or buy. / we can save, serve or kill it; / waster, mark, call or kill it. / But it’s up at the moment we die.” Since then, her poetry has been published in Poetry News, Acumen, Envoi, Orbis, Smiths Knoll and Tears in the Fence, and read on Radio 3. She won the Hamish Canham Prize in 2008. In 2009 she became one of Shetland Library’s ‘Bards in the bog’, had a poem accepted for the Polesworth Poetry Trail in north Warwickshire, and was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, highly commended at the Petra Kenney competition, and named a finalist in the Aesthetica Creative Works competition.