Mark Roper Livres

Mark Roper's relocation from the UK to Kilkenny in 1980 serves as a catalyst for his creative expression, transforming him into a notable nature poet. The book captures his deep engagement with everyday experiences in the countryside, showcasing how this new environment has enriched his imagination and poetic voice. Through vivid observations, Roper explores the beauty and intricacies of nature, highlighting the profound impact of his surroundings on his artistic journey.

"Even So reveals the extent to which Mark Roper's move from the UK to the Kilkenny countryside in 1980 has liberated his imagination and, by allowing him to report on lived, day-to-day experience, helped him to become an extraordinarily distinguished 'nature poet'-or, perhaps the better term, 'poetic naturalist'. Ireland's gift to the poet has been an environment that is still relatively unspoiled, and continues to permit ancient harmonious relationships between land-working humans and the birds, beasts, woodland, pools and pastures with which their lives interweave. Roper's gift to his adopted home, and to the great poetic tradition of 'nature writing' in these islands, is laid out here, in this wonderfully varied miscellany of new work and selections from his earlier volumes." - Carol Rumens, from the Introduction

Opening and closing with poems that describe what he calls a river's 'breath', Mark Roper's collection develops his reputation as one of the most admired nature poets of his generation.

A true hymn to heaven and earth, Beyond Stillness is a moving, sensitive exploration of our relationship with the damaged natural world, seen up close and often in astonishing, affecting detail. Comprising poems that express, often simultaneously, both wonder and grief, with his trademark precision Mark Roper's new collection observes and sketches the world around him with an enviable lightness, even as his perspective gradually widens to include memories of his upbringing, a growing awareness of his own health and mortality.Throughout, we hear the naturalist's self-doubt ("If I could learn / to go without saying" - 'River') but this only brings us closer to both the human witness and to the greater subject of his fascination.Greatly admired for his distinctive, sensitive depictions of the natural world, Roper is no stranger to listening, and the silence that arrives at the end of many of these poems is one that brims with meaning, and which, with unerring judgement, he allows to ring.