Goliat

"Hooson's poetry is a rich and assured gift—complex truths are revealed in language that is precise and luminous. One cannot but admire her craft: the sensuous detail and passionate abstraction. These are meditations steeped in profundity. They call on the reader to dare and leap with her wonderments and ultimately to share and celebrate her explorations. ' Watchfulness' doesn't get better than this." –Menna Elfyn

"Hooson goes out in her wellies and faces down old and new monsters. Her wise and steady gaze takes in the loss of old certainties, both personal and political, the loss of the 'white fronted goose' and of love and innocence. Achingly beautiful, fine and twisty poems– a magical alchemy of the ancient and modern worlds." – Deborah Alma

What is Goliat? Hooson's collection encompasses all of these things: closeness to the monstrous, the deeply human and the more-than-human, a sense of human damage to the natural world. The title poem takes us to the depths of the Russian oil field named Goliat, to the 'singular infinities of the wintering sea', where something is starting to sing.

This intelligent, sensuous second collection by Rhiannon Hooson tackles the precariousness of climate emergency and of existing in a human body, along with poems exploring deep space and the intimate histories of women and their work.