Thank you so much NetGalley and the publisher for this advanced reader copy!

Reading peotry is one of my little joys few times a week, I always try to read few poems every week and I'm glad it was from The Past in the Present this week! Since I was in Sussex last month, it felt even more vivid for me because I could almost feel the grass and the breez when reading these poems, and even better, it felt like I was back in time!

Beautiful prose, but still accessible to everyone. Definitely recommend to anyone who wants to slow down a bit and be immersed in nature!

This collection is a beautiful set of poems about West Sussex. They are long-ish and enjoyable poems that transport you to this gorgeous place and it’s like you are standing there in these places with the author.

This is a short book but it takes a while to read. I didn’t mind though because the writing was never too much but it was lush when it needed to be and spare when it didn’t. Also these poems weren’t hard to understand. The technicality of the poems is obvious but not intrusive. It lets you know that you are reading art.

When I first saw the cover, I immediately wanted to read this book. It gave me the feeling that the same place could tell a story that changes through the years. After finishing it, that first impression did not change. Instead, it evolved. The landscape is presented as an accumulation of time: first millions of years of geological history, then centuries of human history, and finally the modern decisions about what is preserved and what is destroyed.

That idea guides the whole reading experience. Some poetic metaphors are easier to understand than others, but the illustrations help place each moment in time and guide you naturally from one page to the next.