Publications

Otmoor

Otmoor is an area of wetland just north-east of Oxford that seems strangely wild and remote. An artist who grew up there and a poet spent eighteen months exploring the moor, through close observation en plein air and on muddy walks, and through subsequent abstraction. Here are aspects of Otmoor’s past and present, memories and myths, real and imagined stories and images.

This project follows Andrew Walton’s and David Attwooll’s previous collaboration on Oxford’s Port Meadow, published in Ground Work: Twelve Walks (Black Poplar 2014).

The Sound Ladder

The Sound Ladder features war stories and resurrections, Cornwall and Mexico, demonstrations and school dances, refugees and book fairs, the natural world and the surrealism of the Internet, elegy, anger, and humour. And music: these poems listen to what the rhythm section is doing beneath the surface of specific places and events, the beat a few strata down.

David Attwooll was a winner of the 2013 Poetry Business competition with Surfacing. Ground Work (2014) is a poet’s calendar exploring, with the artist Andrew Walton, the topography, history and changing weather and light in a floodplain bordering Oxford and the Thames. The Sound Ladder contains poems from these pamphlets as well as more recent work.

The supercharged, over-communicative modern world in the form of spam and YouTube crackles and buzzes in several of these poems ... Geographically, linguistically, thematically and stylistically this is a varied and rich collection of poems; Attwooll has a keen eye and a sharp tongue but ultimately ... a sympathetic mind

... humane and thoughtful with so much to enjoy.

[Attwooll] balances seriousness and humour within originality of form in ways that are wholly new and are ... permanent additions to the repertoire of English poetry

Ground Work

Ground Work is the product of monthly walks through the course of a year in Port Meadow and Wolvercote Common, an area of uncultivated floodplain bordering Oxford and the Thames.

This collaboration between a poet and a painter explores different aspects of the character and history of the place; improvises on conversations and memories of two old friends; and most of all responds to the chance events, light, and weather as the seasons change.

...lovingly crafted, precisely executed poetry that’s not afraid of a bit of structural experimentation combined with rich visual artwork…What more could you want from a collection? Fantastic.

... gorgeously produced collaboration between a poet and a painter… debunks nature poetry while at the same time creating some of the most exquisite nature poetry I’ve ever come across.

Surfacing

Surfacing was a winner in the 2012/13 Book & Pamphlet Competition, chosen by Simon Armitage.

I especially like those passages where the sardonic and the poignant are almost impossible to separate or tell apart .... Geographically, linguistically, thematically and stylistically this is a varied and rich collections of poems; Attwooll has a keen eye and a sharp tongue but ultimately (I think) a sympathetic mind.

The excitement of reading David Attwooll’s poems lies in the poet’s intense relationship to language and the verbal and textual musicianship with which he treats his subject matter. From the Goths, Transylvanians and teenage samurai, escaped from the pages of books, to email spam or jazz, to memories about childhood and place, these poems capture Attwooll’s delight in the world around him.