About the Author

Ian Marriott has been writing poems for over 20 years. Part of his internal process is that personal experience is often refracted, directly or indirectly, through the natural world. Much of his life has been immersed in nature, from working as a woodsman or climber, to spending time in some of the more remote areas of the world. This has included three years living in Antarctica, guiding scientists on remote field projects for the British Antarctic Survey. On returning from Antarctica, Ian did an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, under the careful guidance of Denise Riley and George Szirtes. In recent years, Ian has re-trained as a homeopath and divides his time between writing, homeopathy, and the outdoors.

Reviews

In this collection brimming with pared down imagery and crystal sharp language we are invited to become the hollow bone – the small vessel with space for insight and reflection. Steeped in the natural world and sensitive to how each body interfaces with the world, Marriott’s debut moves us from the quotidian to the mysterious found in the everyday and in the world’s wilderenesses. The poetry is alive with experiences of the forest, the mountains, the vastness of Antarctica; the language meditative, spare and precise and the form follows breath – short lines that carry contemplative thought forward with fluid ease. Winner of the Cinnamon Press Debut Collection Poetry Award, adjudicated by outstanding eco-poet, Susan Richardson, The Hollow Bone is suffused with shamanic sensibilty that is communicated with elegance, from the title poem with its thoughtfully hone sketches of birds alive and dead to the longer sequence of koan-like fragments in ‘Terra Infirma’, it takes the reader into an alternative space where there is fresh air.
The mirage season is on us, language detaches itself – deep down the steering mountain granite horizons waver and lift – Fata Morgana, soufflé hills – the tethered Zeppelin berg. (Terra Infirma, 13)
*Publisher: Cinnamon Press*