Poetry is not my 'thing', or so I've always believed. My lack of interest was, I’m sure, born from the way my English literature and language teacher introduced poetry to me during my formative school years, with offerings dictated by the prevailing National Curriculum. They fed me the work of John Keats, T. S. Eliot, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the sonnets of Shakespeare, to name but a few. Perhaps my lack of enthralment was to be expected at such a young age. Prose kept me spellbound, depending on the subject, even if poetry did not. And so the long years in a poetry-starved wilderness followed.

However, having read or heard said by several authors whose work I admire, that poetry enriches their prose writing — and ever wanting to raise the quality of my writing — I thought it high time I ventured forth into poetry's 'mystical' realm.

What finer way to start my journey than by savouring Alice Oswald's Dart. For three years, Oswald recorded her conversations with a myriad of people who had an official or unofficial relationship with the River Dart in Devon. Oswald ‘spliced' and rearranged these accounts, creating a poetic narrative spanning source to sea — a story of the pulsing, ever changing, meandering, life-giving and life-taking Dart.

Glico of the Running Streams
and Spio of the Boulders-Encaved-In-The-River's-Edges
and all other named varieties of Water
such as Loops and Swirls in their specific dialects
clucking and clapping...
— Dart

My joy at experiencing Dart was twofold: (a) reading the (faultless) 48-page, casebound, Faber and Faber special edition, adorned with stunning cover illustrations by Jonathan Gibbs; (b) listening to Faber and Faber's (also faultless) unabridged Audible.com recording of the book, narrated by Oswald herself, with utmost proficiency. This runs for one hour and seventeen minutes, which I allowed to run at normal speed, so enjoying an unadulterated rendering to capture every nuance of the author's narration at the delivery speed she deemed fitting. It was also perfect to read Oswald's words in tandem with her narrative, a practice I enjoy when I have unabridged works at hand.

A winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002 for her poetry, the book blurb is right in declaring that 'Dart creates a wonderful, varied and idiomatic narrative of the River Dart in Devon.' I recommend you read it. I own the book and audio recording, so I'll be visiting Dart again. Guaranteed.