Stay Winter

stay winter: light the torch
in dark where life is forged
in the belly
draw breath
draw rein

Partly inspired by a blacksmith’s apprenticeship, Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe has wrought a range of gleaming elements into the poems of her second collection, Stay Winter. Animal familiars abound, and the figure of the horse recurs: we encounter the twin steeds of the warrior Cú Chulainn along with the champion thoroughbred Red Rum. Languages and mythologies combine – both Celtic Brigid and Greek Hephaestus appear as gods of the forge. There are pieces drawn from a powerful Irish literary heritage, including Yeats, Joyce and Heaney, as well as painterly translations of Neruda and Lorca.

Stay Winter captures the ‘thing of beauty’ and the ‘dark thing’ as the poet confronts the shadow aspects of the self. It conjures a compelling wintry realm – ''forest wilderness'', ''tenuous sky'' – in which love is made and remade anew.