Winner of the Griffin International Poetry Prize
Gjertrud Schnackenberg is a major voice in American poetry known for the sensuous richness of her imaginatively daring poetry of ideas. Her first new book for a decade, Heavenly Questions is a setting of six long poems of passion, mourning and redemption. Shifting effortlessly between the lyric and the epic, it is her most deeply compassionate and strikingly personal book of poetry as well as a powerful work of intellectual, aesthetic and technical innovation.
'I've just discovered a wonderful American poet called Gjertrud Schnackenberg - she really is called that - and I wish I had the time to catch up with everything she's done. I think she's brilliant.' - Clive James, speaking on BBC Two's Front Row Late: When Mary Beard met Clive James
‘Schnackenberg is best known for her stunning command of prosody. She is the most accomplished master of blank verse on the planet… Her dream songs remain both impossibly intimate and formally perfect: a double monument to love and to grief. Here is the most powerful love poetry of our time' – Eliza Griswold, The American Prospect
'It is perhaps the most powerful elegy written in English by any poet in recent memory, and it is a triumphant consummation of Schnackenberg’s own work… But no elegy succeeds unless it is also a love poem, and with astounding dignity Schnackenberg calls up the physical and emotional intimacy that can exist between lovers' – Karl Kirchwey, Slate
‘The momentum of her lines suggests grief's endless reprisals and perpetuations, and the rhythms of an infinite, recombinant universe. In six long poems, which constitute a single integrated work, Heavenly Questions guides us through the transformations of bereavement. The effect is immersive and utterly compelling… The ambition and ingenuity of Heavenly Questions reminds us of what it is possible for elegiac poetry to achieve, particularly given a longer form; but the courage at its core, the tremendous, vulnerable dignity, the refusal to seek easy consolations, or depict such a grief in familiar terms, are what hold the most power to enchant and impress, and make these poems resonate long after the book has been closed' – Frances Leviston, The Guardian: Click here to read the full review
‘The title comes from the “Heavenly Questions” of Qu Yuan (c. 300 BCE), cosmological riddles he left on temple walls…Schnackenberg has written nothing less than a Miltonic book-length poem on eternity, infinity, and the meaning of life’ – D.H. Tracy, Poetry
Gjertrud Schnackenberg on Bloodaxe Blogs:
• Jonathan Galassi interviews Gjertrud Schnackenberg about Heavenly Questions
• High Talk and Reeling Thoughts: Gjertrud Schnackenberg on 'High Talk' by W.B. Yeats
VIDEO
Gjertrud Schnackenberg reads from Heavenly Questions
Gjertrud Schnackenberg won the 2011 International Griffin Poetry Prize for Heavenly Questions . This video includes the judges' citation, followed by her reading of the poem 'Fusiturricula Lullaby'.
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