Scarecrow, MW Bewick

This debut collection of poems from MW Bewick transfigures contemporary landscapes of the city and the countryside in an unsettling flux of fractured narrative time and atomised human agency. Here, a panorama of gleaming towers and blood-red cranes mirrors another of overgrown flora and shorelines collapsing into the sea. At the book’s heart is the figure of the scarecrow – a monad, feet cemented, ragged legs flailing, unable – or unwilling – to act as the world rushes by. At turns wistful, angry, and touched with remorse, this inventive and thought-provoking volume brings together registers of folk, baroque and the surreal to confront a 21st-century sense of existential crisis.

MW Bewick is a writer of poetry and fiction. He works, and is widely published, as a journalist. He lives in Wivenhoe, Essex. See more at mwbewick.com

Praise for Scarecrow

‘A seriously good poet – fierce, political, able to capture industrial and post industrial landscapes with precise and sometimes painful imagery, tender about the natural world – love it!’
Kate Foley, poet

‘If I ever write anything half as good as Scarecrow or have something that lovely looking published, I’ll be bloody happy’
David Southwell, author Hookland Guide

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