Dart

By: Alice Oswald

Narrated by: Alice Oswald

Over the course of three years, Alice Oswald recorded conversations with people who live and work on the River Dart in Devon. Using these records and voices as a sort of poetic census, she creates in Dart a narrative of the river, tracking its life from source to sea.

The voices are wonderfully varied and idiomatic - they include a poacher, a ferryman, a sewage worker and milk worker, a forester, swimmers and canoeists - and are interlinked with historic and mythic voices: drowned voices, dreaming voices and marginal notes which act as markers along the way.

©2002 Alice Oswald (P)2009 Faber Audio

Critic reviews

"If you never read poetry, make an exception for this." ( The Times)

River Dart

What a wonderful nature-river-local people poem about the Dart river, beautifully read by the author. This is from Spacecraft Voyager I, New and selected poems, by Alice Oswald.

Would take it with me th o that desert island

Dart is a poem full of stories, gorgeous images and language read by Alice Oswald. Because the poet reads her own work, the performance is fluid and moving. it doesn't hurt that she has a great voice! I listen to "Dart"again and again with pleasure and surprise. it's a recorded book I'd take to that often-mentioned island for company, solace, and to remind me of the variety and beauty of people living their lives within a community!