Who’s this moving alive over the moor?”

“All voices should be read as the river’s mutterings” writes Alice Oswald as a preface to her beautiful new book, Dart, from Faber & Faber, a book/poem set on the river near where she lives in Devon. The mutterings—fragments of human voices, history, river culture, close observation of the river itself in continuous flow—stay true and quick, in language with muscle and snap all the way through.

The ending might be a tad over-defined, in my opinion, but I’ve added Dart to the list of books the traveller carries, in the form of place = form of poem section, next to Steveston.

And with a draft of my Hillsdale book complete, for now, I’m moving on to a series of imaginary real pubs, beginning (as much as any idea “begins”) yesterday with a visit to the Polton Arms, this morning with the dream pub, this afternoon with a bus ride into Edinburgh.