The Pretence of Understanding
Beth Davies’ The Pretence of Understanding explores loss, not just of loved ones but of youth and adolescence. In these poems where time can stand still or run backwards, the reader finds themselves caught in longing moments of looking back at childhood; they remind us to run in the snow while we get the chance.
Winner of the 2022 New Poets Prize.
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Helen Mort: “Beth Davies doesn’t shy away from the important questions: are ‘ideas of things….enough to build a life from’? ‘What’s it like to be old?’ ‘Is there a flower / for the feelings that have taken root in my chest’? These poems want to know if a streetlamp is a star, if we can ‘stay forever / in this perpetual present’. I would call this pamphlet ‘a breath of fresh air’ but its far more striking than that: to steal one of Beth’s brilliant images, it is a snowball-in-the-face when you most need it, a wake up call. Its an invitation to think and feel more deeply. Go on, take it.”
Anthony Anaxagorou: “A beautifully strange and encoded book. I was particularly drawn to the tensions made between a place and a self – the longing to connect while remaining cautious as to what that connection asked for.”
Jay Hulme: “Beth’s work masterfully reveals the delicate beauty that can be found in even the most unexpected places.”
Review from Christine Hammond on Everybody’s Reviewing (link to review): “When you read The Pretence of Understanding (The Poetry Business), it’s not hard to see why Beth Davies won the 2022 New Poet’s Prize.
“Her debut collection is a considered response to the realities of transition, exploring both the resultant rewards and losses. Her voice is clear and unambiguous. It re-visits childhood, acknowledging the immovable family roots that are woven in and uses them to help make sense of past and present experiences. […]
“The poetry has its own motif of loss, decay, decline and death. This is often intelligently articulated using nature, notably through a lens of some of its not-so-cute inhabitants such as rats, crabs, insects, earthworms and (rotting) fish. The restrained, everyday portrayal of their visceral fates subtly serves to remind us on a metaphysical level of our own human experience.”
Beth Davies 