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Nigel Jarrett

Miners at the Quarry Pool

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'This compelling collection of poems, based loosely on his grandparents’ hard-lived lives as welsh miners, proves Nigel Jarrett to be master of his own voice. These honed, 
varied poems, with their strikingly original and accurate images and bigness of vision, capture
eras still in living memory, including the two world wars, not only in Wales’s history, but also 
in England’s. Jarrett, in this virtuoso performance, offers the reader brilliant, driven 
testimonies to ways of life both gone and carrying on.' Patricia McCarthy, Agenda Poetry

 

 

‘...as a music critic by profession, Jarrett has a marvellous ear...’ Guardian
 
 
Miners at the Quarry Pool is a collection of above and below – and nearly every space in between. From the dizzying heights of photographs taken from an aeroplane to the miners just delivered from their daily work, the collection is an unapologetic, yet satisfying examination of the spaces we inhabit and our existence within those spaces.
 
Survival, depression, family, friendship, nostalgia, war, love, and death – each are incisively carved a niche in Miners at the Quarry Pool. Nothing is neglected in this collection; toil and trains take a place among trees and devices of torture – even the courtesies of wearing a hat merit examination. ‘See a world in a grain of sand’, wrote William Blake; Miners at the Quarry Pool is not far off the achievement.
 
Author Bio:
Nigel Jarrett is a freelance writer, a former daily-newspaper reporter and a winner of the Rhys Davies Prize for short fiction. For many years he has been music critic of the South Wales Argus. Born in Cwmbran, he was educated at West Mon School, Pontypool and at Cardiff University. His collection of short stories, Funderland, was published by Parthian in 2011. Nigel’s prize- winning short story ‘Mrs Kuroda on Penyfan’ will be included in the forthcoming Library of Wales Short Story Anthology. He has led writing workshops, judged writing competitions and is a frequent guest-speaker, lately at the Newport and Gwent Literary Club. He likes drawing, never tires of watching his cat and is insanely devoted to jazz. He lives in Chepstow.