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Frieze

John Whale

Cover of Frieze by John Whale
Categories: 21st Century, British
Imprint: Northern House
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (80 pages)
(Pub. Sep 2013)
9781847772398
Out of Stock
  • Description
  • Excerpt
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  • ...Now, using your finger
    as the unit, get the exact measurement of the dead.
    Once done, have your anatomy books bound.
    Next time out, remember boots, stockings, and comb,
    wrapping paper and pens, a skin for your chest,
    and a pair of snug, tight-fingered gloves for hands.

    from ‘The Great Artist’s To-Do List’
    Fallen warriors, a conquistador, a cat; an 1815 namesake; a father, a mother, a childhood rhyme; a boxer, an explorer, a stuffed Welsh fish… Frieze entertains a host of shadows, all the dead who inhabit our lives. It is at once elegy and exploration. Attending to experiences of childhood and the workings of history, the poet discovers the ways in which we mark time and are subject to time in our lives. At the heart of the process is the poem itself, with its capacity for expression and the space it provides for reflection, precision and beauty.
    Falling Warrior 
    Trooper 
    Footage 
    Hero 
    Tattoo 
    Curlicue 
    Messages 
    Frieze 
    Correspondence 
    Blue Bud 
    In Tagore’s The Gardener 
    The Fir Tree 
    Tumbling 
    Dip Dip Dip 
    Gwyniad 
    Face 
    China 
    The Cocky Watchman 
    Lone Star 
    Privet 
    Float
    April 
    Childwall 
    On the Road Outside Our House 
    One o’clock 
    Cherry-Blossom Time 
    Cricket 
    Purplue Writing 
    Pantoufles 
    Bird, Bird 
    Bird Book 
    Googling 
    Fact 
    Vanilla 
    Doubles 
    Legerdemain 
    Answering Back 
    Look-Out
    The Great Artist’s To-Do List
    John Whale is the Director of the University of Leeds Poetry Centre. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Waterloo Teeth and Frieze, both published by Carcanet/Northern House. Waterloo Teeth was shortlisted for the Forward Prize's Felix Dennis Prize for best first collection. He is Managing Editor of ... read more
    Praise for John Whale 'I loved this book, clever and culturedand steeped in the era of the Romantics.'
    Suzi Feay
     'mixes verbal originality... with sympathetic clarity and seriousness: poems that matter.'
    Bernard O'Donoghue
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