Blood Earth & Medicine (Signed)
Martock, Somerset: Parrett Press, 1991.
Paperback.
First Edition. Signed with "Best wishes" by the author on first free endpaper. With a foreword by John Fowles. With comments by John Fowles and Seamus Heaney on rear wrapper panel. Crowden, born in 1954, lives in Somerset and worked for twenty years as a shepherd, sheep shearer, cider maker and forester.
A collection of poems charting the progress of a casual agricultural labourer voyaging through the seasons, seeing with strange eyes the ocean of hedgerows and woods, farms and farmyards, flocks and orchards, the work of hands and generations of hands. A way of life little known about, for by its very nature it is nomadic and impermanent.
The sequence begins and ends with a hurdle-marker working in a hazel coppice, one of the most ancient agricultural technologies, little changed since neotlithic times.
Item #9008346 x 8-15/16" printed wrapper around white paper boards, 63pp, notes on the text, appendix on farm wages.
Fine Condition.
Price: $25.00