In Winter Light Ina Rilke David and Helen Constantine

David and Helen Constantine

In her Selected Poems we see this and more — her uncompromising engagement with the politics of gender and class

They span places as far afield as Belfast

but the sense of timelessness is sometimes disrupted by poems which relate contemporary events

This is a work of great beauty

In Winter Light Ina Rilke David and Helen Constantinela lumire dhiver (1977) is a central work in the writing of the Swiss French poet Philippe Jaccottet (1925 2021). Written in middle age, it forms a bridge between the poets intricate early lyrics and his more expansive and meditative later work. Starting from a direct confrontation with the raw facts of mortality, its three poem sequences strip away further layers of illusion until a glimmer of meaning starts to appear in the winter light of the