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Linda Rose Parkes studied literature at U.E.A and lived in Germany for 19 years where she taught adult education and performed with song writers and musicians. She continues to run poetry workshops in Jersey, her native Channel Island, was co-editor of Wavelengths, the first Channel Island poetry anthology and has published three collections with Hearing Eye: 'The Usher's Torch', 'Night Horses' and 'Familiars'.
Praise for books by Linda Rose Parkes: 'Elusive magic, the poet is ‘Schehezerade of the Thousand and One Nights’. One more sip, one more shadow to pass through…' – Sarah Law on ‘The Usher’s Torch’ in Orbis “Parkes’s relentless eye misses nothing, but control is masterly. A bravely candid voice, a deft searcher under surfaces.” – Katherine Gallagher on ‘Night Horses’ in Artemis 'Linda Rose Parkes's ‘Familiars’ is dark and scintillating, rich with life and dense with mingled rage and longing'. – Bethany W. Pope's review of ‘Familiars’ in Ofi Press 44 ‘There is an excellent weirdness in these poems which makes them distinctive, unique even.’ – Martin Crucefix 'This is a fine collection in every sense: finely-wrought and detailed as well as beautiful. Through language of ringing clarity, she makes us unsure of ourselves, and so gives us back to ourselves, with new understanding.' –Tanja Nightingale, Dream Catcher (Familiars) THIS CLOSE
Linda Rose Parkes 'This Close', published in September 2018, is Linda Rose Parkes's fourth collection. The cover of 'This Close' is based on her painting, 'The Swimmer'. “We are lucky these poems are tethered to the page by ink because they want to run, float, fly from the paper into a Chagall sky, voluptuous with possibility. Linda Rose Parkes writes as she paints – with generosity, wonder and luminous colour.” – Helen Ivory
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'Linda Rose Parkes mixes myth, fairy tale, song, rhyme and narrative. Sometimes the allusions are subtle. In A little crime that lives we are told of a mysterious ‘she’ who is ‘small-boned as Goldilocks’ and the ‘crime’ is the theft of her ‘good girl crown’ which adorned ‘her lovely tresses’. A lost shoe takes the image of ill-fitting footwear and extends it into a metaphor for spirituality, a soul that is forced to ‘limp/towards the hope of a better/when one foot is shorn/of a glass slipper.’ All dressed up in her sea-green bow is delightful to read, musical and enchanting with echoes of Elizabethan songs and The Owl and the Pussy Cat and, one of my favourites in this selection, Exuberances: an assay, is witty and innovative in its associations, rhymes, musicality and form.
Darker moods and attitudes feature in this close and there is negativity, secrecy, absence and death. The figure who runs in her nightdress through the dark is ‘thin as air’ and ‘the cold blows through’, the narrator who drifts towards her has not come to light her way home with a lamp nor strew ‘luminous petals’ on the path. Late night music overheard from a neighbouring house is the moment ‘the dead slip in’ – the same dead who yearn for the comfort of everyday things but who end with empty hands reaching out for ‘a cup of tarnished sunlight.’ (A glass of water). This is a beautiful collection and one I’d strongly recommend. What I am left with, most of all, is an impression of salvation, a feeling of hope, a great deal of love. If you only have chance to read a few poems in this close then immerse yourself in the final half a dozen, the poignancy of them, their tenderness.' – Mandy Pannett Sentinel Spring 2019 |
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The door sings
its welcome |
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it's the kind of door
that trickles honey in the light and says come in twice at least leave your coat in the hall the kettle's singing sit yourself down here at the window in the garden oak a blackbird warbles breezes play among the cushions |
next door is grey and
cracked at the hinges too much slammed yanked open lost or stolen jobs hopes loves but this door is a honeycomb a promise don't keep walking by scarred with disappointment don't slow your step to rush silently on only knock and step in out of the ruins only knock and the door will swing gently wide © Linda Rose Parkes 2018 |
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