Foray, Border Reiver Women

Poetry from Pippa Little

£6.99 paperback
ISBN 978-1-903914-35-9

Pippa Little lives in Northumberland with her husband, three sons and dog. She has been writing poetry all her life while working as an editor, teacher and literacy worker and due to ill-health now writes full time. She is proudest of having won an Eric Gregory Award, of being one of the editors of Writing Women, that her first collection, The Spar Box, published by Vane Women, was a Poetry Book Society Choice, and of winning the 2008 Poetry Biscuit Prize.

Read This Was The Year

Read about the launch events for Foray, Border Reiver Women.

"Foray is an enthralling evocation of the lives of the Border Reivers, seen from a female perspective. Love and conflict, fear and delight - the blend is rich, chilling and emotionally exact. Pippa Little is a poet with a wonderful sense of musical shape and weight, so that story and song are inseparable in her work. I recommend it highly."

Sean O'Brien

"Foray. A book about what has been borne. A border balladry of women. Their voices, anonymous, plaintive, gone, are those of wind and water; their one voice, lone, is that of the land, of moor and midden and unreflective moon. They were, they are, they will remain undaunted in their dispossession. A midden of images, wild, perpetual as stars."

Gillian Allnutt

"From the first poem of Foray I am with Pippa Little. She takes me by the hand and heart on her brilliant exploration of the previously unsung women of the Border Reivers. Her poems are demanding, intimate and downright beautiful. They shine in their chosen territory, reminding us that poetry is always the stuff of life. Delight in Foray. Pass it on."

Anna Woodford

"Since the days of the Border Ballads the wild history of Northumberland has seemed to require poetry. These rich and musical poems in the voices of Border Reiver women are a very fine contribution to a long tradition.
Each winter longer than the last, frail bridge / between our horsemen fallen silent, / the blue coughing of our children and the far / / hoof beats from another time, / not yet, but travelling towards us. ('Coming Back Alive')"

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