Riviere 81 Austerities

Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-28904-2
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 128 Seiten

All three-dimensional objects can be experienced in two dimensions: it just takes some careful unpicking of the seams. Witty, comic, plaintive, touching, acerbic, droll, cavalier, caffeinated, irreverent, stringent: Austerities, the mind-altering substantial debut from Sam Riviere, seems to achieve the impossible in being all things at once. Initially conceived as a response to the 'austerity measures' implemented by the coalition government in 2011, the poems quickly began taking on a life in kind: 'cutting' themselves on levels of sentiment, structure and even subject matter. Not content to merely build a series of freethinking poems, these remarkable pieces seem eagerly and mischievously to analyze their moment of creation, then weigh their worth, then consign their excess to the recycling bin thereafter. Experience is speedy, the poems seem to say, so dizzyingly fast that the poetry will inevitably be running to catch up - often arriving at a scene the moment after the moment has gone. The effect is as funny and it is startling, beguiling as it is surprising, and makes Austerities a vivid reminder that deprivation, as Leonard Cohen put it, can be the mother of poetry.

Sam Riviere is the author of the poetry books 81 Austerities (2012), Kim Kardashian's Marriage (2015), and After Fame (2020), as well as numerous limited-edition titles. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2009, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2012. Born in Norwich, he currently lives in London, where he runs the micropublisher If a Leaf Falls Press. His first novel, Dead Souls, is published by W&N in the UK and Catapult in the US. His latest poetry collection Conflicted Copy was published in 2024.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Riviere, Sam