Description
This collection is primarily a celebration of all things floral, yet is much more than that, being also a hymn to life, for the poems are written from unusual and sometimes challenging perspectives. The poems in the 1st section, ‘Flower Power /People Power’, directly connect to flowers and plants either by extolling their virtues or by connecting flowers to people in an alternative way. The second section ‘Roses and Thorns’ gives an in-depth retrospective on the inherent joys and sorrows of life’s journey from cradle to grave, seen from the perspective of a woman in her third age, whose life has been punctuated by chronic illness, grief and loss. Yet they are very much an anthem to survival, a way of seeking peace and closure by exploring more difficult themes through the medium of poetry.
About Margaret Royall
Margaret’s fascination for landscape poetry, myth, legend and nature have been enhanced by annual writing retreats on the beautiful island of Iona, painting in Crete and writing in her beloved France. She was short-listed in 2018 for the Crowvus and the Bangor Literary Festival Poetry Prizes. Her work has featured in many anthologies by Hedgehog Poetry Press and recently won their collection competition, to be published 2021. Her poetry has appeared in both The Blue Nib and Impspired Literary Journals among others. In May 2020 her memoir of childhood, The Road To Cleethorpes Pier, was published to great acclaim, receiving straight 5 star Amazon reviews. She is a regular performer at open mic nights and leads a poetry workshop in Nottinghamshire.
“Margaret Royall’s ‘Where Flora Sings’ is a collection to lift the spirits during the long winter nights. Royall’s love of all things natural shines through on every page and the reader cannot help but share her delight through such beautifully observed, life-affirming poems. Though she acknowledges that nature can be brutal and life precarious, there is an unwavering optimism and faith in these poems. Age isn’t to be feared but to be valued and admired; nostalgia isn’t melancholic but comforting; to grieve is to have loved; and death is a precursor to resurrection. At the end of her poem, ‘Amaryllis’ Royall writes:’ Sweet memories of this colourful profusion/will stay forever locked within my heart’, capturing perfectly what this reader will take away from her collection. ”
- Nigel Kent
“Margaret Royall’s second collection is a highly personal work. She conveys her love of flowers, and their significance to her, both as a woman, and as a poet. She employs a number of diverse narrative tones in this volume, from contemporary and conversational through to voices drawn from received literary traditions. Humour, reflection and spirituality thread through her poems, too. Margaret invokes all five senses as she treats the reader to encounters with blossoms, and wider natural environments. Her poems are informed by her interest in horticulture, geology and music, though she wears this lightly. Her pieces are also underpinned by her passion for the natural world and the welfare of our planet. She uses the motif of seasonal shifts to reflect stages in her subjects’ life journeys, and her metaphors are painterly and enrich her poetry.
A wide range of poetic forms appear in the collection. I particularly enjoyed the complexity of her ‘Sestina for a Medieval Birthing’ and the affecting simplicity of ‘September on Iona 1’. The collection is enhanced by a pervasive sense of temporality, as expressed in ‘Midnight Stardust’. I am sure that we will be reading more from this sensitive writer, a dedicated and prolific poet.”
- Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon
Product details
- Paperback : 68 pages
- ISBN-13 : 978-1-913499-43-3
- Product Dimensions : 14.81 x 0.15 x 21.01 cm
- Official Release Date: 28th November 2020
- Order Signed Copies direct from Margaret Royall by contacting her HERE
“In Margaret Royall’s Where Flora Sings her love of nature shines through on every page and the reader cannot help but share her delight through such beautifully observed, life-affirming poems. Though she acknowledges that life can be hard, there is an unwavering optimism and faith in these poems. Age isn’t to be feared but to be valued and admired; nostalgia isn’t melancholic but comforting; to grieve is to have loved; and death is a precursor to resurrection
The first section is entitled Flower Power/People Power. The poems in this section explore the capacity of flowers to elicit memories of the past, so that the observer can relive the feelings of those times. In Buttercup the simple flower is imbued with happy memories of her loving relationship with her mother; for the male subject of the Marigold the flower invokes the pain of unrequited love; in Lady with Lavender Aura lavender oil is described as ‘an idyll in a bottle’; and in Daisy Chains the poet recaptures the innocence of youth. Throughout this collection there is an uplifting positivity: winter is a passing phase, it will always be followed by renewal and rebirth. For example, Royall describes the appearance of the flower after the hard winter as ‘invok(ing) the joy’ of the Resurrection in the poem, Pasque Flower Mary Magdalene. This is a theme that appears again in The Holly and the Ivy and which underpins many of the poems in the second section.
Royall’s delight in natural settings is conveyed through vibrant, sensory imagery that vividly evokes the scenes that she describes so impressively in poems such as (the brilliantly titled) Crocosmia, Sissinghurst at Midsummer, and A Spring Trilogy. In Summer Meadows the fields are ‘opulent symphonies’, the wild flowers rise and fall ‘in gentle cadence’, ‘a gentle ballet…thoughtfully choreographed’ and in Rhododendron Triumph she describes the bushes as ‘fuchsia-robed flamenco dancers/Skirts ruffled and frilled, performing ad hoc escobillas’. This use of imagery from the arts suggest that the beauty of nature is not the product of accident but that of intelligent design: another marker of the author’s faith that has inspired these poems.
The second section is entitled Roses and Thorns: a Retrospective from the Third Age. These poems are more sombre: the voice of experience. They acknowledge that life can be both brutal and precarious. She writes movingly of grief and loss, but above all the poems in this section are about survival, of triumph over adversity. The speaker in Ghost in an Empty Chair finds comfort for her loss in incidental memories; the mother in Sestina for a Medieval Birthing succeeds in giving birth despite the unbearable suffering; and in Diary of a Dalliance with Rachmanninof after three years of grieving, normality returns. There is hope even in the darkest of moments.
Margaret Royall‘s Where the Flora Sings is an impressive, well-crafted collection. At the end of her poem, Amaryllis, she writes:’ Sweet memories of this colourful profusion/will stay forever locked within my heart’ and this pretty much captures what the reader will take away from her collection.”
- Nigel Kent, Author of Psychopathogen and Saudade
Brian McManus –
Before the publication of this, her latest volume of poetry, Margaret Royall already enjoyed a fastidiously earned reputation as a poet and writer of admirable quality, and her work here in Where Flora Sings does nothing to diminish that reputation.
A widely published and prize winning poet, Margaret Royall’s previous work, including the much-loved and highly acclaimed memoir of childhood, The Road to Cleethorpes Pier had already set the bar very high, and her latest work serves to reinforce and extend that reputation.
Where Flora Sings is a multi-faceted exploration of our place in this world, and is both supported, underlined and intertwined throughout with reference to the natural
world, and how we relate to it. The use of poetic techniques and devices are woven seamlessly into the fabric of the work, and provide a valuable substructure to the examination of the subject matter.
That subject matter includes reflections on death and remembrance, love and disappointment in love, themes of resurrection and the need to seize the day. It touches on ageing, dementia, grief and loneliness but never in a morbid or melancholy way.
It is a retrospective, looking back on life’s triumphs and trials. While nodding one’s head to difficulties and darker times, this is ultimately a life-affirming and positive vision of the natural world and our place within it, and how we might navigate our way through our one sacred and precious life.
Brian McManus. Poet, Reviewer, Researcher.