Yield

- Blurb -

Three definitions of the word Yield give meaning to the odyssey undergone in Claire Dyer' s third collection: a journey which sees a son become a daughter, and a mother a poet for both of them. Charting these transitions, the poems take us through territories known and familiar - landscapes of childhood, family and home - into further regions where inner lives alter, outer ones are reimagined. Whether evoking clinic visits, throwing away old boyhood clothes, grieving over what' s lost, these honest and unashamed poems build to celebrate that place at the heart of motherhood where gender is no differentiator and love the gain. ' The actual things of the world are everywhere in Claire Dyer' s Yield - thick socks, Glenfiddich, bathrobes, Swarfega, Swedish Meatball Wraps - and in the spaces between move families, friends, lovers, their interrelations astutely picked out as the unsaid is made solid. But such rooted settings don' t prevent flight. Any poet who can end a poem with the lines "the bones in its spine small white discs of" or "Fuck the gob-lin. Rock it" has earned the right to our attention. ' ~ Matthew Caley' There is so much that is uncompromising in Claire Dyer' s poems: the cruel precision of each word, line and image, and the sharply perfect intelligence of every metaphor and conceit. And yet Yield is a warm embrace of a book. A chronicle of love, generosity and ethics, Yield is a restorative piece of writing - a solace. ' ~ Kathryn Maris