Claire Crowther has worked as a journalist, editor and communications director. But first and foremost, she’s a poet. Her first collection (Stretch of Closures) was shortlisted for the Jerwood/Aldeburgh prize, and since then she has had warm praise for further books and pamphlets. Her work is intensely varied: no one publication like another. Knithoard is a closely linked sequence of poems exploring — with lyrical grace and subtlety — the art of knitting, in which (as every knitter knows) all of life is inextricably bound.
Charity
Aren’t they everywhere, the lost?
Will I bring them home?
Aren’t they everywhere, the lost?
Dead sweaters. Abject vests.
The forwardness of their stitchery
admits: We are handmade,
we have been held and put down.
Each one is hung, packed tight,
a stitch in a row.
That blue cabled Donegal cardigan.
That worsted hap.
Will I buy them?
Will I bring them home?