Winner of the Southern Arts Prize and shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection

The poems in Matthew Francis's first collection range from the light-hearted to the unsettling, from lyrical and witty evocations of landscape and domestic life to narratives of apocalypse and surreal fantasy. Night and winter provide the dominant metaphors, but, from this material, Francis, whose technical adroitness and flair for storytelling are equally remarkable, conjures up a substantial imaginative world in which it is possible to live with a renewed sense of freedom.

Dark, dangerous and exhilarating, Blizzard reveals a fully mature and compelling talent.