The Worrying Rose

Threaded through The Worrying Rose, Katharine Towers’ quiet and meditative fourth collection, are poems referencing Samuel Barber’s Hermit Songs cycle, songs for voice and piano which in turn arose from anonymous texts by early Irish scribes and anchorites. These poems distil Towers’ thinking about women, creativity and solitude: there are nuns and female hermits, alongside writers and artists such as Nan Shepherd and Maggi Hambling whose voices are harnessed by Towers in her explorations o...