Synopses & Reviews
Some similes act like heat shields for re-entry
to reality: a tramp in flames on the floor.
We can say Flame on! to invoke the Human Torch
from the Fantastic Four. We can switch to art
and imagine Dali at this latitude
doing CCTV surrealism.
We could compare him to a protest monk
sat up the way he is.
From "Tramp in Flames"
With his free-flowing and musical takes on popular and hidden culture, Paul Farley has emerged in the last decade as one of Britains most imaginative and formally gifted young poets. He engages with the commonplace and the overlooked, the absurd and the catastrophic, the scientific and the mythic, in ways that make us stop and think again about what it is to be living in this world at this particular time.
Farley is well on his way to becoming one of the definitive English-language voices of the age.
Paul Farley is the author of three award-winning collections of poetry: The Boy from the Chemist Is Here to See You, The Ice Age, and Tramp in Flames. He lives in North Lancashire, England.
With his free-flowing and musical takes on popular and hidden culture, Paul Farley has emerged in the last decade as one of Britains most imaginative and formally gifted young poets. He engages with the commonplace and the overlooked, the absurd and the catastrophic, the scientific and the mythic, in ways that make us stop and think again about what it is to be living in this world at this particular time.
Praise for Paul Farley
One of the most disarmingly original poets now writing.”Alan Brownjohn, The Sunday Times (London)
"Funny, observant, brilliantly musical . . . streetwise, erudite, elusive, but very accessible"Ruth Padel, Financial Times (UK)
"Paul Farley's poetic terrain lies in the blank spaces and featureless temporal zones that make up the margins of our lives, those times and places that slide into oblivion as soon as we pass through them. In Farley's poems, these are primary matter, and he treats them with an acute eye for the image, an admirable facility for the mot juste, and an unsentimental but affecting sense of loss."Patrick McGuinness, The Times Literary Supplement (London)
"Paul Farley is a poet of wit, sensuality and warmth . . . If the best poetry aspires to the condition of music, as Mallarmé suggests, then this is poetry of the highest order: melodic, humane and intellectually engaging."Judges of the 2007 Griffin Poetry Prize
"Paul Farley is one of the most gifted poets to have emerged in the United Kingdom in recent years. Whether he's writing about a train's dramatic entering a tunnel or real-life television or his own dodgy teeth, he manages to combine the hummability of a well-wrought lyric with a wonderfully humane world picture."Judges of the 2009 E. M. Forster Award
Review
“One of the most disarmingly original poets now writing.” —The Sunday Times
"Funny, observant, brilliantly musical . . . streetwise, erudite, elusive, but very accessible" —Ruth Padel, Financial Times
"Paul Farley is a poet of wit, sensuality and warmth...If the best poetry aspires to the condition of music, as Mallarmé suggests, then this is poetry of the highest order: melodic, humane and intellectually engaging." —Judges of the 2007 Griffin Poetry Prize
Synopsis
Some similes act like heat shields for re-entry
to reality: a tramp in flames on the floor.
We can say Flame on to invoke the Human Torch
from the Fantastic Four. We can switch to art
and imagine Dali at this latitude
doing CCTV surrealism.
We could compare him to a protest monk
sat up the way he is.
From "Tramp in Flames"
With his free-flowing and musical takes on popular and hidden culture, Paul Farley has emerged in the last decade as one of Britain's most imaginative and formally gifted young poets. He engages with the commonplace and the overlooked, the absurd and the catastrophic, the scientific and the mythic, in ways that make us stop and think again about what it is to be living in this world at this particular time.
With The Atlantic Tunnel, Farley is well on his way to becoming one of the definitive English-language voices of the age.
Synopsis
Some similes act like heat shields for re-entry
to reality: a tramp in flames on the floor.
We can say Flame on! to invoke the Human Torch
from the Fantastic Four. We can switch to art
and imagine Dali at this latitude
doing CCTV surrealism.
We could compare him to a protest monk
sat up the way he is.
—From "Tramp in Flames"
With his free-flowing and musical takes on popular and hidden culture, Paul Farley has emerged in the last decade as one of Britains most imaginative and formally gifted young poets. He engages with the commonplace and the overlooked, the absurd and the catastrophic, the scientific and the mythic, in ways that make us stop and think again about what it is to be living in this world at this particular time.
Farley is well on his way to becoming one of the definitive English-language voices of the age.
About the Author
PAUL FARLEY is the author of three award-winning collections of poetry: The Boy from the Chemist Is Here to See You, The Ice Age, and Tramp in Flames. He lives in North Lancashire, England.