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The President of Planet Earth

The President of Planet Earth

by David Wheatley (Author)

  • New

    Paperback 2017

    $13.80
Synopsis

Shortlisted for the 2018 Irish Times Poetry Now Award. In his fifth collection of poems, David Wheatley twins his birthplace and his current home, Ireland and Scotland, to engage issues of globalism, identity, and language. He takes inspiration from the Russian Futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov, self-nominated President of Planet Earth, who in a state of apocalyptic rapture envisioned a new world culture, its rise and its dramatic undoing. In The President of Planet Earth Wheatley brings an experimental sensibility to bear on questions of land and territory, channelling the messianic aspirations of modernism into subversive comedy. We move between Pictish pre-history, the imaginary South American nation ofaA A aA A `Oblivia', aA A and post-independence referendum Scotland. Wheatley marries classical, Gaelic, Scots and continental traditions. He deploys several styles - prose poetry; concrete poetry; translations from Middle Irish, Latin and French; sestinas and sonnets in Scots - to heady effect. The President of Planet Earth refashions language and the world it shapes, devising a transformative poetics.

$13.80

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20 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 168
 Edition: 1
 Publisher: Carcanet Press
Published: 26 Oct 2017
ISBN 10: 1784104205
ISBN 13: 9781784104207
Book Overview: Imagines futuristic social states from the South American nation of `Oblivia' to post-independence referendum present-day Scotland. Questions of place and belonging, channelling messianic ambitions of modernism into rich and subversive comedy. A memoir of childhood, evocations with Russian and South American culture, and deep engagements with Ireland, the North of England, and Scotland. Identifies with the radical strain in Irish poetry. Includes translations from Middle Irish, Latin and French, sestinas and sonnets in Scots.

Media Reviews
'Wheatley's is a poetry of displacement, uncertainty and sheer possibility'. - Guardian; 'This is a book I've been looking forward to for a long time, and it does not disappoint. Wheatley is one of our most original poet-critics, and the serious range of his enthusiasms is evident in the many forms, voices, histories and horizons here, from Lucretian couplets and Irish lament to the tragi-comic decadence of Baudelaire and the witty 'avant-gardening' of Scottish artist Ian Hamilton Finlay. Like an 'idling docker's flourish on the spoons', Wheatley makes music from the throwaway moment, and in this big, rich, satirical, lyrical volume draws it all into a virtuoso performance.' - Jeremy Noel-Tod; 'Gracefully meditative...a Chatterton-esque literary discovery of old, albeit with references to Bob Geldof and Alka-Seltzer.' - Literary Review
Author Bio
David Wheatley was born in Dublin in 1970. His previous collections are 'Thirst' (1997; Rooney Prize for Irish Literature), 'Misery Hill' (2000), 'Mocker' (2006) and 'A Nest on the Waves' (2010). His work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including 'The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry', and has been awarded a variety of prizes, including the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize and first prize in the Friends Provident National Poetry Competition. His critical study 'Contemporary British Poetry' is published by Palgrave. He lives in rural Aberdeenshire.