Maiden Voyage

'Maiden Voyage' the first full collection of poems by Heather Wells.

A deeply intimate set of poems written with a strong sense of loss and nostalgia, her voice is both fragile and fiercely assertive.

Beauty can found in unexpected places: London cemeteries, at the White Cube, or outside a train station. Beauty can even been found in grief and decay.

The collection is broken up into themes and sections but the pieces resonate both individually and as a whole.

‘Wells’ poetry contains compelling grace notes and moments of dazzling distillation, where experience, place and reflection are held in the balance of the framed words. Wells sense of reaching inwards is also keenly realised.
She is a young poet of ambition and dedication and this is an impressive first collection.' - Steven O’Brien

'Here is a clarity of language shot with strong, often arresting imagery - ‘florescent plastic heels totter’ beneath a ‘throttled sky’ - elsewhere - ‘see/hair that ripples long as the ocean bed ... sea-hair and cotton white dresses.’ Wells has a keen eye for detail but also an honesty and empathy for her subject that allows her to move unflinchingly between the personal and political, from describing an art show, to the complexities of a relationship, to the plight of a refugee queueing for citizenship. Here is a broad range, underpinned by a knowledge and desire to engage with the work of others, as much as it is the world around her. A bright talent with a fine sensibility.' - Lydia Towsey (www.secretagentartist.wordpress.com)

‘Matters to do with gender are, at long last, beginning to fall into retreat where the professional lives of men and women are concerned. They remain critical for poems. All poems are love poems because our emotions are kinetic: the beat of language aligns itself with the rhythms of the heart. Heather Wells’s love poems are fiercely and intensely feminine and should prove instructive to even a dense masculinity. The sexual dialogue that cases much of mankind’s grief and most of its happiness is the old story renewed and revitalised. These poems know how to dance. Read them aloud in order to pick up some steps for yourself.’ - Grey Gowrie