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Standard Midland

Standard Midland

by RoyFisher (Author)

  • Used

    Paperback 2010

    $3.47
Synopsis

Roy Fisher is known internationally for his witty, anarchic poetry which plays the language, pleasures the imagination and teases the senses. But he is at heart an English Midlander. In Standard Midland, he confronts and worries at nuances of perception and the politics of understanding. Many of the poems are concerned with landscapes, experienced, imagined or painted, particularly the scarred and beautiful North Midlands landscape in which he has lived for nearly thirty years. Shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award in 2010, Standard Midland contains work mostly written since his Bloodaxe retrospective The Long and the Short of It: Poems 1955-2005 and his texts for the artist's book Tabernacle , his recent collaboration with Ronald King. Publication coincided with his 80th birthday. Critic Peter Robinson is publishing an 80th birthday festschrift with contributions by Fisher's many admirers at the same time. Standard Midland is the first Bloodaxe title to be issued in e-book format as well as in paperback.

$3.47

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More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 56
 Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Published: 11 Jun 2010
ISBN 10: 185224870X
ISBN 13: 9781852248703

Media Reviews
'Standard Midland is an honest appraisal of what it is possible to say, and what remains to be said, by an artist in old age. It finds Fisher at his most approachable and makes an excellent introduction to this important poet's work' - Paul Batchelor, Guardian. 'Witty, profound and moving meditations on loss and ageing; a wonderfully varied testament to a very English blend of imagination and reserve' - Costa Poetry Award judges' comment. 'The personality that emerges from Fisher's poetry, for all his influences, is altogether English: ironic, humorous, self-deprecating and unpretentiously local' - Elaine Feinstein. 'A poet of cities in growth and in dereliction... His knowledge of urban landscape is formidable, and expressed with an originality of touch which makes these poems, at their best, revelatory' - Helen Dunmore.
Author Bio
Roy Fisher has published over 30 poetry books, and has been the subject of numerous critical essays and several studies, including The Thing About Roy Fisher: Critical Essays on the Poetry of Roy Fisher, edited by Peter Robinson and John Kerrigan (Liverpool University Press, 2000). He has published three books with Bloodaxe. The Dow Low Drop: New & Selected Poems (1996) was superseded by his later retrospective, The Long and the Short of It: Poems 1955-2005 (2005), and followed by his most recent collection, Standard Midland (2010), published on his 80th birthday and shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award in 2010. His first US Selected Poems, edited by August Kleinzahler, was published by Flood Editions in 2011. Born in 1930 in Handsworth, Birmingham, he retired as Senior Lecturer in American Studies from Keele University in 1982. He is a freelance writer and jazz musician, and lives in Derbyshire.