Earth's Almanac

Published by Enitharmon Press, July 2015

The poems in Newlyn’s book emerged over a fifteen-year period following the untimely death of the poet’s sister. She adapts the form of the ‘Shepherd’s Calendar’ to the phases of grief, condensing a long process of reflection and remembering into the passage of a single year. The poems shift through forms and move between places – Oxford, Borrowdale, and finally Cornwall, where the poet finds a second home near the sea. In these intense expressions of love and loss, anger and guilt, there is no smooth path towards consolation.

Chosen as a TLS 'Book of the Year' by Gabriel Josipovici

'It's a long time since a book of poetry moved me as much as Lucy Newlyn's Earth's Almanac. She has grafted a sequence of elegies for and rememberings of a dead sister over a fifteen year period onto a Shepheard's Calendar of the natural year. This could lead to mawkishness and sentimentality, but Earth's Almanac is tough and complex. Often it is impossible to tell if the details of the changing seasons in Cornwall and Oxford, where the poet lives, are the occasions or the metaphors for memory. I loved it.'
Gabriel Josipovici, TLS

Review in Dundee University Review of the Arts

Selected poems from Earth's Almanac

It came in July

It came in July, creeping sickening,
saddening – a deadly fear.

On a bench, in the glaring sun:
emptied garden, sister and dear sister,

her face pale with panic – or was it pain?
I asked her a question she couldn't answer.

Then, with a look I'd seen before,
five years before, almost to the day,

she left us, `for a while' she said,
and went indoors, and stayed away.

Replica, spooky double,
first in a sequence of ghastly pairs,

your mouth set in silence, your head
framed in the doorway, your shadow

moving slowly upstairs: speak to me.
It is not too late. There is no never.

Enlive

It's the brand name for a drink,
and it comes in three fruity flavours.
it has a pungent, sticky sort of smell.

The manufacturers pack it in cartons
for the terminally ill – small bright boxes,
just the right size for an average meal.

It contains all the nutrients
to keep a dying body
ticking over – tick tock tick.

She had it as ice cubes and enjoyed it
for dessert. Towards the end, she took
to sucking it, like a lollipop on a stick.

And I've nothing against it, this essence,
this elixir, except its name: Enlive.
What blind fool came up with that?

An extra ‘n’ at the end would have been
encouraging, but the ‘en’ at the beginning
is completely crass, not to be forgiven.

A curse on the committee
which nodded this name past,
making every breakfast

an uneasy transition,
making every lunch-time
a tactless reminder,

every supper her last.

Her shoes

Put yourself in her shoes
I'll say every time I wear them.

They're backless, brown,
with sporty black soles

and a chunky purposeful look.
I'm told they're in fashion – funky.

I didn't steal them from her wardrobe
with the other gear after she died.

I tried them on beforehand.

How they suited me, how I loved them,
how I stomped about in them round her bed.

‘They're great’, I shouted.
‘They're yours,’ she said.

‘Do I get them now?’ I risked out loud.
‘There's a limit,’ she snapped –

and then, mock-pathetic, ‘just give me
a chance to wear them first,’ she begged.

(I'd rather be in my shoes than yours
I quipped, this time inside my head.)

We got by on this kind of repartee –
the bolder and blunter the better.

It was sisterhood, it was camaraderie,
and for a while we did it in style.

Now I have her shoes instead.