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Jules Whiting grew up in Cholsey, Oxfordshire; much of the inspiration for her poetry comes from the village and the surrounding countryside. She obtained an MA in creative writing from Bath Spa University. Jules has had her poems short-listed for the Gloucester Prize 2020 and in Buzzwords 2020, commended in the Poetry Society Members Competition 2020, and received a special mention in the Spelt Poetry Competition 2021. Her poems have also appeared in Acumen, Orbis, South, Envoi, The Interpreters House, The High Window, Haibun Journal and various anthologies, including: Stanley Spencer Poems (Two Rivers Press); Best of British (PaPer Swans Press); A Hatchery of Shadows (SciPo 2019); Angled by the Flood (SciPo 2020); Addicted to Life (Teignmouth Festival 2021); What the Peacock Replied, (Dempsey & Windle 2019) and Fireflies and Flames (Dempsey & Windle 2022). Her collaborative pamphlet, What Colour is my Brain? was published in January 2022 by Hedgehog Press. Folding Time is Jules Whiting’s first full collection. Folding Time
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'This highly charged collection of poems pitches direct into the elemental without recoil, reminds us that “we are made of the same elements as the stars themselves.” The core of the book is the sequence that reimagines the cadaveric donor as a baby cradled in a lambswool fleece, elicits the scary name of Trundle Ward, confronts the truth of terminal illness and, heartbreakingly, addresses her significant other: “I want– / to run with you the tunnel’s length, echoing/ our voices forward over Amwell Springs.”
As it was with Heaney, Whiting’s truths are to be found in the rendering of physical detail with pin-point fidelity: “the pure light drained.” Her habitat is the lyric,both exploded and formal; she turns it into the perfect vessel for her compressed narratives. A strange prescience permeates these poems, which cannot be named. It is a stunning debut.' Tim Liardet, Professor of Poetry, Bath Spa University Despite its themes of loss, pain, brushes with death and chronic illness, what shines through Folding Time is sunlight, hope, gratitude for the rapture of living and theastonishing beauty of the natural world, brought alive with the pin-sharp clarity of a latter-day John Clare. Page after page the reader is rewarded by such lines as ‘sunriseas an art form’ or the visceral intimacy of the ‘two squashed beds of green / where deer have lain side by side/ and left behind their broken warmth’. Wonderfully life-affirming, Jules Whiting has written a book to be treasured and widely shared.
Dr. Jenny Lewis, The Poet’s House, Oxford .ISBN 978-1-913329-71-6
2022, perfect-bound paperback, 76 pages, RRP £10.00 Only available in the UK: this Paypal button is only for UK orders. We regret that we can only refund 90% of payments made in error by overseas buyers |