Paper Boats
The Burning of Teignmouth and Shaldon, 1690
Indigo Dreams, 2018, £8.99
ISBN: 978-1-910834-97-8
To order a copy, either send a request using the Contact page, or email to PaperBoatsTeignmouth@gmail.com
Paper Boats takes us to a history almost forgotten, bringing to life fictional voices from the past and present to tell the story of the last invasion in 1690 on English soil. The poetry is coloured by the River Teign and its ever changing sky and riverscape. The characters are dressed with fear, witchcraft, godliness, gratitude and resilience with hope for the future.
Jump aboard these Paper Boats, let the tide take you to the forgotten story of the last invasion on English soil. The sound of the sea and the far-off smell of smoke permeate poems, which link a tale of terror and destruction with the poet wandering her shoreline, delivering a ‘cry from the past’ and ‘a gleam of fire in the setting sun’.
Maggie Butt
‘Miracle of miracles, chalice of clay’: in Paper Boats, Sheila Aldous weaves a tapestry of lives through time in the haunting seascapes of the Teign valley. Her evocations are both delicate and powerful, her poems taut and shaped like a butterfly; the careful forms of her language remind us that this is the thread that binds and redeems us in poetry.
Hilary Davies
From opening reflective, elegiac poems from the present: from a shoe, centuries old, still laced, found half-buried in the mud, Sheila Aldous plunges the reader back to 1690, to an awakening of fire and brutal devastation. Here is a compelling consideration of a tragic moment in Teignmouth’s past.
Graham Burchell