S.J. Litherland's fourth collection charts the hurricane years she shared with fellow poet Barry MacSweeney. Allied with him in his struggles against alcoholism, she found herself swept into his failing bids for recovery. The challenge of her distress, resentment, love and grief illuminates the sense of ordinary life attempting to prevail over the Shelleyan storm.
The book, in four parts, runs on parallel dialectical courses through this turbulence. The poems are fragments of the narrative broken by time changes, flashbacks, incursions from breaking news on TV, responses to and meditations on daily events and crises, including the poet's loss of her mother. Greatly diverse in form and tone, ultimately these poems shape a journal of survival and a long learnt spirit of resistance, something that earned her MacSweeney's title of 'warrior queen'.
This very powerful collection of poetry … the work surges out into visions, hallucinations, historical references. And then into the deepest darkness of despair and back to moments of lightness, beauty and clarity.
Jeremy Hilton, Tears in the Fence
The Work of the Wind is an outstanding collection, moving and intelligent, stylistically and formerly various in its accomplishment, its more harrowing poems complemented (but never sentimentalised) by a sense of tenderness and beauty.
Elizabeth Heywood, Acumen
To read The Work of the Wind is to be immersed in the struggle between truth and beauty, between form and the unruly impulses that actually lead us to write. No grace without pressure: Litherland's poetry walks this line.
Paul Batchelor, The North
'The Work of the Wind is an unusually strong collection, deeply moving, and very accomplished. These are poems that had to be written, most of them really love poems of one sort or another. However desperate and troubled, there is no hint of self-pity here, only honesty and courage.'
R.V. Bailey, Envoi magazine
I am re-reading SJ Litherland's amazing The Work of the Wind, especially the sonnet section. This is electrifying work and deserves as wide an audience as possible...Poetry to make your jaw drop and heart ache with life knowledge, blood knowledge as Lawrence would have called it.
Andy Willoughby (on his MySpace blog, about half way down the left-hand column.)
There is an authentic grief here tinged with mordant humour which seems to act as a type of reply, riposte even, to MacSweeney's own demonic self-lacerations...In a way The Book of Demons and this new publication should be read side by side.
Ian Brinton, The Use of English
'The Work of the Wind by S.J. Litherland (reading MacSweeney's The Book of Demons too) A matched pair. Fabulous tour de force from Jackie.'
Michael Standen introduces his extended review in Other Poetry describing the book as 'a deeply impressive demonstration of how life's pains can be turned to artistic gain.' He concludes:
Very often the failures in human relationships go to the making of poems angry, self-pitying, bereft. In The Work of the Wind we have an exploration of the territory carried out in an unflinching, forgiving and resolved spirit. Poetically achieved, the work here offers an important model of contemporary absolution.
Michael Standen, Other Poetry
'The Work of the Wind is a wild storm of words, extreme emotions and wonderful poems . . . But it is also a brave attempt to make meaning out of memory, an assertion that, through poetry, ‘the idea of order is presiding over the nature of fragments.’'
Andy Croft, Morning Star
'The Work of the Wind is a great book, reminiscent in some ways of MacNeice's Autumn Journal in its charting of time with references to events both personal and universal. She has harnessed the wind, rescued the tumbling memories from potential chaos, and allowed it to move her forward in a burst of passionate creative energy.'
Jo Colley, Kenaz
'So, to the highpoint of the night an appearance from top northern poet Jackie Litherland supported by the Hydrogen Jukebox cabaret team performing from Jackie's wonderful new book, The Work of the Wind.'
Bob Nichols, Evening Gazette, Middlesbrough
'An excellent new collection – The Work of the Wind – from S.J. Litherland sits on top of my reading pile.'
Kitty Fitzgerald, Scotland on Sunday: Shelf Life
The Work of the Wind costs £8.50 and was published in July 2006.
ISBN: 978-1-873226-82-7
Photo: Diane Cockburn
S.J. Litherland's work encompasses love, politics, loss, and philosophy. She has six published collections of poetry, The Long Interval (Bloodaxe 1986), Flowers of Fever (Iron Press 1992), The Apple Exchange (Flambard 1999), The Work of the Wind (Flambard 2006), The Homage (Iron Press 2006) and The Absolute Bonus of Rain (Flambard 2010).
Her highly praised The Work of the Wind is a four-part book about her years with the poet Barry MacSweeney and The Homage is a sequence of poems about cricket and former England captain Nasser Hussain which was nominated for Cricket Book of the Year. Her work has appeared in various anthologies, most notably in New Women Poets (Bloodaxe 1993), Forward Book of Poetry 2001 and North by North East (Iron 2006). She was co-editor of The Poetry of Perestroika (Iron) and has edited many books. She has received two Northern Writers' Awards, 1994, 2000. Originally from Warwickshire, she has lived in Durham City since 1965, bringing up a son and daughter and working as a journalist (as Jackie Levitas). Now a part-time tutor and mentor in creative writing, she is also a founding member of Vane Women writers collective and press. She has four grandsons.
You can read some of S.J. Litherland's poems online via her entry on the Vane Women website.
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