Andrew Forster
Andrew Forster’s first collection confronts wide-ranging themes with clarity and artistry. In Fear of Thunder the reader meets a diverse selection of characters and situations: the young girl in a cul-de-sac who dreams she is a horse; a father unable to shake a childhood fear; the air force pilot who refuses to fly. Yet whether Forster is conjuring up a horse-whisperer hounded for his gifts or thinking about the poet Elizabeth Bishop taking stock in Carolina, he is at all times asking us to consider our common experiences.
From the industrial South Yorkshire of the poet’s childhood to his adopted home of rural Scotland, via imaginative leaps to Spain, America, Germany and eighteenth-century rural England, these poems look at what makes us who we are.
Fear of Thunder was shortlisted for the 2008 Forward Prize best first collection.
Andrew Forster is currently Literature Office at Dove Cottage.
