'In this powerful collection Ross Gillett covers a wide poetic landscape — traditional verse forms, carefully honed free verse, exploratory long sequences and a wealth of shorter poems. He covers an equally wide range of experience: family and childhood, love and jealousy, and quietly metaphysical encounters with the energies of land, sea, sky and weather.
'The sensibility revealed in these poems is visionary, warm, and often humorous. Here are the best poems produced in the last ten years by a writer committed to a poetry of intensity, complexity and clarity — a rare trio of qualities based on a strong rhythmic life and an ability to go deep in search of the uniquely true image.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'For Mark Tredinnick, best known so far as a nature poet employing distinctive and often ingenious imagery, A Gathered Distance is a brave book – even a risky one. It’s essentially the diary of a family breakup or, more accurately, its immediate aftermath. As with most poetry in the confessional genre, the poet is explicit about some people and reticent about others.' (Introduction)
'For Mark Tredinnick, best known so far as a nature poet employing distinctive and often ingenious imagery, A Gathered Distance is a brave book – even a risky one. It’s essentially the diary of a family breakup or, more accurately, its immediate aftermath. As with most poetry in the confessional genre, the poet is explicit about some people and reticent about others.' (Introduction)