Ergasy / Poems by Christopher Cornwell
‘A joyful and exuberantly excessive, polyvocal poetry collection… Cornwell’s insistence on the poem as a vehicle for asking questions – and his refusal to offer answers… is enjoyable, challenging and necessary for the life of poetry.’
Amy McCauley, New Welsh Review
‘A ridiculously quotable book, full of phrases that will live with you’
Professor John Goodby
editor of The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas: The Centenary Edition
‘Love words? Then follow, if you dare, Christopher Cornwell’s intoxicated progress through the English language’
Robert Minhinnick
author of Diary of the Last Man, winner of the Wales Book of the Year 2018
The Lonely Press is proud to publish the debut poetry collection by Christopher Cornwell. The book is introduced by Professor John Goodby and accompanied by a series of specially commissioned artworks by Constantinos Andronis. Ergasy is available to purchase here:
Customers in the UK £9.99
Customers in Europe £9.99 (plus £1.50 P&P)
Christopher Cornwell lives, studies and works in Swansea. His poetry has been featured in The Lonely Crowd, New Welsh Review, The Crunch, The Lampeter Review and Wales Arts Review for whom he also contributes criticism. He is Editor of The Gull online magazine. Ergasy is his first collection.
Read ‘A Hidden Orchard’ from Ergasy here.
Love words? Then follow, if you dare, Christopher Cornwell’s intoxicated progress through the English language.
Cornwell’s newly-minted poems, celebrating sound, texture and ‘the gilded end of the gutter’, are always aware of what has gone before.
And it’s the ancient themes that matter: love, lust. Death. Ergasy is the sound of a poet arriving, slightly out of breath, but with a lot to say…
Robert Minhinnick, author of Diary of the Last Man, shortlisted for the T.S Eliot Prize, 2017.
‘It’s a very great pleasure to be asked to introduce Christopher Cornwell’s first collection, Ergasy. I’m an admirer of his work, and it’s a privilege to be able to recommend it to a wider readership than his circle of friends and admirers….
Chris’s ambition is most evident, of course, in his taste for inkhornisms and neologisms. The poems here are studded with them, dazzlingly. Before I met him, in October 2015, in the Creative Writing M.A. class I was teaching, I had never met a student who expanded my vocabulary by much, but Chris proceeded to do so, on a regular, week-by-week basis, throughout the semester.’
John Goodby, editor of The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas: The Centenary Edition.
