Books

Signed copies of all publications are available direct from the author. Payment can be made by cheque or Paypal. Contact andrew@thecompassmagazine.co.uk

The poems in Homecoming (Smith Doorstop 2014), Andrew Forster’s third collection, continue his explorations of what it means to make a home: from Cumbria, where he now lives, to South Yorkshire where he grew up, this book is firmly rooted in the north of England.   He works as Literature Officer for the Wordsworth Trust and the ghost of Wordsworth, that supreme poet of home, haunts many of these poems. As the poet approaches middle age, this is a book of settling down, of beginning to be content with what we have managed to distil from life.

£9.95 plus £1.00 postage

Fear of Thunder (Flambard Press 2007) is Andrew Forster's first full-length collection of poems. The poems range from childhood memories through adulthood to art and landscape. They look at what makes us human. The father who can't escape a childhood fear; the airforce pilot who refuses to fly; Elizabeth Bishop taking stock in North Carolina. The wide range of characters speak to us of common experience.

The book includes the poems Horse Whisperer and Brothers, both included in the AQA GCSE anthology 'Moon on the Tides', and Shadows and Winter Night: Edinburgh, both included in the AQA Unseen Poetry anthology. It also includes Mother, Diving, which features on the AQA GCSE sample exam paper.
Fear of Thunder was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2008.
‘Fear of Thunder is a fine collection filled with poems which are both resonant and delicate. Forster is a wonderful storyteller and his poems are populated with family and memoir, characters from many walks of life. Great poets are seasoned and annealed by time and we will gladly look forward to more of Forster.’
— Daniel Thomas Moran, in Poetry Salzburg Review (Number 13)
‘In his best poems he writes not of great expectations but of dreams, desires and hopes unfulfilled. He's good on regret and he's terrific on childhood. He's not wistful and he doesn't do nostalgia; instead he's evocative, perceptive and warm.’
— Keith Richmond, in Tribune (29 February 2008)
£7.50, including postage.

Territory (Flambard Press 2010), Andrew Forster's second full-length collection of poems, explores what it means to make a home in a particular place, and the relationship with the environment that this implies. Much of the collection is set in the remote former mining village of Leadhills in south-west Scotland, where he lived for seven years, and where these questions are encountered daily. The poems delve into the landscape, history and natural history of Leadhills, its surrounding area and beyond, examining the uneasy balance of our relationship with nature.

‘His descriptions of country life through the seasons offer an evocative perspective on living amidst the forces of nature, which can both inspire and oppress in equal measure.’ PBS, Summer 2010


‘... the reader is spoilt for choice. At line and phrase level the book is replete with vivid and memorable language which lifts free from the page and sticks in the mind.’ [...] ‘Throughout the book Forster advances a sense of loss — of connection, awareness, love of nature — coupled to an urge to respect and conserve the treasures of the natural experience while we still can. For every plea to stop (‘the land’s been over-grazed ... over-beaten, burnt once too often/in the name of regeneration’, Cairnsmore of Fleet) there is a nudge in the direction we should go.’
James Roderick Burns, in Other Poetry, Series 4, No 2.

‘Write about animals and nature – particularly if they are red in tooth and claw – and you quickly find that Ted Hughes casts a rather long shadow. But Andrew Forster is confident enough in this, his second collection of poems, to take on the rich legacy of Hughes from The Hawk in the Rain, Lupercal and Moortown and write about the lives, landscape, history and natural history of Leadhills, an old mining village in Lanarkshire.’
Keith Richmond, Tribune, 30 April 2010

‘Forster is very good at detail and his use of language is accurate and understated.’
Jonathan Davidson, The North, No.47

£7.50 including postage

Digging (Roncadora Press 2010) is a hand-stitched pamphlet containing ten new poems by Andrew Forster with accompanying, integral drawings by the artist, printmaker and artist's book-maker Hugh Bryden. The poems develop the themes of Territory by exploring the poet's new home in the South Lakes. Animal encounters and meditations on snowfall sit alongside poems which try to elucidate a working life spent living in the shadow of Wordsworth, as Andrew spends his days travelling to Dove Cottage to promote Wordsworth's rich legacy.The poems are a taster for the next full-length collection.

The original artwork from Digging has been exhibited at Grange over Sands library and Djang in Bellingham, and, as part of the Roncadora 'In Black and White' exhibition, at Gracefield Arts Centre, Dumfries, and at StAnza 2011.

Roncadora Press was shortlisted for the Publishers Award in the Michael Masks Poetry Pamphlets Awards 2011, for a submission that included Digging.

£7.00 including postage


Also available: Numbered limited edition digital poem-prints from original linocuts by Hugh Bryden. The Adder, Rough Island and Winter Trees. Signed by poet and artist.

£7.00 each including postage

















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