Hyem

By Robyn Bolam

Robyn Bolam's new collection, Hyem, explores what and who makes us feel at home. Both people, and creatures – from whales off Kaikoura in New Zealand, New Forest cicadas, fish in the Thames, wrens, robins and starlings, to a climbing fox – face challenges to find homes where they can thrive. Hyem lets you walk London streets with Dickens or share the last moments of a 17th-century helmsman, whose final home is Stockholm's Vasa museum. A wolves' valley becomes home to surfers and a high voltage laboratory turns into a creative home for a poet. Hyem (home in Geordie) is also about growing up on Tyneside, loving a place through changes and celebrating those who preserve its history and spirit. Hyem is Robyn Bolam's first book of poetry since her retrospective New Wings: Poems 1977-2007, which included work from two earlier collections, The Peepshow Girl (1989) and Raiding the Borders (1996).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Release date: Nov 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9781780373959

Robyn Bolam

Robyn Bolam was born in Newcastle, grew up in Northumberland and now lives in the New Forest in Hampshire. She has published four books of poetry with Bloodaxe, The Peepshow Girl (1989), Raiding the Borders (1996), New Wings: Poems 1977-2007 (2007), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and now Hyem (2017). She is the editor of the anthology, Eliza’s Babes: Four Centuries of Women’s Poetry in English (Bloodaxe Books, 2003), and of five 17th-century plays. She is Emeritus Professor at St Mary’s University, a former Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Southampton University and RLF Lector on the Isle of Wight.

Book preview

WHERE HOME STARTED

Where Home Started

I used to cross the Tyne to school. Days raced

on a rattling, crowded bus, hands gripping

fingered chrome, knees braced against straining seats.

Once, reading The Return of the Native

in too-dull light – the Tyne below Scotswood,

dark and silent under the bus’s roar –

wheels left the road and we slipped down a bank

to halt feet away from lapping water.

Cocooned in gabardine, I was handed

out through the upturned emergency door,

clutching my satchel.

Then, while the shipyard lads lit cigarettes,

we huddled, stamping, at the river’s edge,

watched the steady lights of a pilot