Borderlands explores the shifting dividing lines between places, between people, between emotion and intellect, between thought and language. The ambivalent meeting place between land and sea is often evoked: “and everyone will know the coast isn’t anything like a line, it’s more a theory or suggestion” (Out Near Point Clear) Language, in particular, is slippery and controversial, and the poet is keen to avoid the pitfalls of over emotional responses. Nevertheless, contemporary issues haunt the poems, as a dark backdrop to the necessities of domestic life. The precarity and uncertainty of our times is perfectly captured in this sharp and intelligent collection. MW Bewick is a poet, editor, journalist, occasional lecturer and musician. He lives in Wivenhoe, Essex, and together with his wife, the artist Ella Johnston, runs Dunlin Press. A first full collection of poems, Scarecrow, was published in 2017 and a second, Pomes Flixus, followed in 2020. Pamphlets include The Zircon Ferries (Beir Bua, 2021), The End of Music (Black Light Engine Room, 2022), A Study of a Long-Lived Magma Ocean on a Young Moon (Dunlin Press 2022) and Bubblegum (Dunlin Press 2023). He has performed around the UK and at poetry/book festivals and he helped to run Poetry Wivenhoe for a number of years.
