Veld Fires

From the opening poem 'Mornington', Joseph Woods echoes Camus's dilemma in L'Étranger, setting about his return to Zimbabwe, a country that has become home. Through a near decade of expatriation, he remains the lyrical existentialist, but one who is connected to the metronome of both 'here' and 'elsewhere'. In an embodiment of Nietzsche's 'eternal recurrence', to arrive in Harare, he discovers, is to enter a world of political stasis, where a coup d'état may install a fresh regime that subsequently proves a new version of the old.

Throughout Veld Fires, Woods takes succour from the domestic, from family, from his growing daughter, his obsession with the natural world and the moods and volatility of the seasons. A poet who has long embraced displacement, in this new collection he shows little of the jadedness of the mileage clock and these curious and engaged poems reveal a great deal of the depths of his encounters and discoveries.

"His voice is easy, melodic, seeming sometimes casual, sometimes deceptively smooth but always alert. If Woods is technically expert it is not to dazzle but to reveal his subject matter ... his work taken as a whole shows an impressive reach and range."-Eiléan Ni Chuilleanáin