U.A. Fanthorpe wrote of Diverting The Sea, Emily Wills\u2019 first collection \u201cThis is a domestic collection and a disturbing one\u201d. Yes: exactly. Emily is married, has children, lives in Gloucestershire where she works as a GP. The love and joy of this ordinariness suffuses her poems: at the same time she looks through the smiles to the pain, loss, sheer physical agony, that sit waiting for us. The writing is clear, brief, concise. The best poems in this book, \u2018Five a.m.\u2019, \u2018At a Distance\u2019, \u2018The Raspberry Net\u2019, \u2018Red Primroses\u2019, are very good indeed.<\/p>\n
Michael Mackmin<\/em><\/p>\n I watch the sky; there is snow forecast. I carry shopping, satchels, books. I am far away. I tidy rooms. I sleep. I buy flowers and watch them opening. I am shut inside. It is March The children are tight buds filled with words. You are shut inside. You watch the sky. You tidy rooms. You sleep. You are far away. Emily Willis was born in Hampshire in 1958. She went to medical school in Bristol and worked with her husband at a rural hospital in Malawi in the late 1980s. They have three children and live in Gloucestershire where Emily works as a part-time GP. Her first collection, Diverting the Sea was published by The Rialto in 2000. Her second collection, Developing the Negative, was published in 2008.<\/p>\n \u2018Emily Wills\u2019 gift lies in choosing quite ordinary things and seeing through them into strangeness\u2026\u2019Red Primroses<\/h5>\n
\nYou say you suspected for some time.<\/p>\n
\nYou arrange words and probabilities.<\/p>\n
\nYou remember the three days we spent
\non the cheapest bus to Greece.<\/p>\n
\nYou wonder how to tell the children.<\/p>\n
\nand should not be snowing.
\nThe flowers are too red, the wind too cold.<\/p>\n
\nYou will not see them opening.<\/p>\n
\nI feel I have known this for all time.<\/p>\n
\nThe snow is too red, the flowers too cold.<\/p>\nAuthor biog<\/h4>\n
\nU.A. Fanthorpe<\/em><\/p>\n