A brilliant new book of minimalist poetry has been ejected into the world thanks to Dan Power’s Trickhouse press. I was lucky enough to blurb it, below, and the book can be snapped here https://www.trickhousepress.com/product/-atomised-by-robin-boothroyd/2?cs=true
“Hey listen poetry is about language first and it's more artificial than speaking even. So if a poetry is reduced down to its atoms, small clusters of letters, single words and their slight variations, misspellings, mishearings, well that's important literary work. And hey listen Robin Boothroyd is not only able to do this, which is hard, because the smaller poems get the more every single tiny gesture is exposed, but he has done it with a humour which suggests a great emotional intelligence as well as a linguistic, poetical, intellectual one. Atomised is a concentrated gem of a book. It's Brain Eno and a whole whale. It's froth and sore eros. You'd be lucky to see it slowly!”
- SJ Fowler
A note on: The Robin Hood Estate, a poem in POETRY
The magazine needs little introduction, POETRY has been publishing for over one hundred years, inarguably the most coveted place to publish a poem in the English language. Pretty lovely to have my first poem with them published in the October 2016 edition of the magazine, in print and online. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/90671
The Robin Hood Estate is taken from my series The Estates which explores the ambiguous connection between the utopian projects of post-war British architecture and its turn, more recently, into demolition, after what is generally seen as a failed social experiment. As is often the case, with these poems, I'm trying to tie this concern into the material and history of the English language itself, and it's connection to wider trends in British history, like the Empire and its death.
A lovely thing to be in the magazine with relatively complex work (though as ever I think it's playful and easy to read) do visit and follow POETRY magazine if you're not already. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/sj-fowler
A note on: rehearsals for my play - Dagestan
An amazing experience working with actors Robin Berry, Gareth Tempest, Maya Wasowicz, Steve North and director Russell Bender, and of course producer Tom Chivers. Visit www.twitter.com/dagestanplay
