Cattle Console Him

By Chris Preddle

The consoling cattle in Chris Preddle's second collection can be seen from his kitchen window in Holme, West Yorkshire. These poems are often grounded among local friends and the local moors, but expand into a far larger cultural space that takes in Gilgamesh, the Greeks, medieval monks, courtly love, music, modernism, the golden ratio, compost bins, James Bond and Caterpillar tractors.

Their serious concern is a search for values; they consider love, friendship, art, politics and the present, in the face of uncertainty, unstable selfhood and mortality. Chris Preddle puts rhythmic, unmetred lines into traditional forms, with ingenious pararhyme. His words, and the poems they form, relate to each other persistently with slants and angles of sound and meaning. Above all, these poems are witty, erudite, sardonic, grave, civilised and humane.

On Bonobos:
"Accessible, scholarly and humane, Chris Preddle's poems... speak of change, ageing, love lost and found - the evolution and sameness of the apes of the titles - and trace the significance of the present in an over-arching view of history. This is an engaging first collection, genial, plain speaking and profound."
Katrina Porteous, Biscuit Poetry Competition Judge

Chris Preddle is a retired librarian and lives in Holme in West Yorkshire, on a windy shoulder of the Pennines. A sequence of 32 Variations on 'Sappho 95' appeared in Stand. His work has also appeared in PN Review, Poetry Review, The Rialto, The Shop, Smiths Knoll, Envoi, Orbis and other magazines. He won the first prize for short poems in the Poetry on the Lake Competition 2008 and in the Scintilla Competition 2007. He was a finalist for the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize in 2007, 2006 and 2005. He won the Biscuit Poetry Prize in 2001 and published a short collection, Bonobos (2002). Cattle Console Him is his first full-length collection.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1904130410
• ISBN13: 9781904130413
• Release Date: February 2011
• Publisher: Waywiser Pr
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.8" x 0.5" x 5.3"