Böcker av Paul Farley

An eclectic gathering of new work from one of the outstanding English poets of our time.

A new collection from one of the leading English poets writing today, Paul Farley.

Paul Farley is now widely recognized as one of the leading English poets writing today. Selected Poems takes stock of a singular talent of great formal gifts: for readers new to his work, this is an ideal and generous introduction, drawing on four collections from his acclaimed debut The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You to his most recent, The Dark Film. Farley is a cultural archivist, a nostalgist of the darkest and most unsettling kind, and a meticulous curator of those fleeting details which define our lives and times most poignantly: he already reads like one of the poets by whom future generations will know us best. His Selected Poems is a marvellous introduction to one of poetry's most capacious and eclectic imaginations.

The Dark Film, Paul Farley's first collection since the highly acclaimed Tramp in Flames, expands the poet's research into 'the art of seeing', and all that humans project of themselves into the world. Farley's great poetic gift is his ability to switch between the local and the universal, the present and the historical past, with the most apparently effortless of gear changes; he brings to our immediate attention things previously hidden - whether out of sight, in the periphery of our vision, or right under our noses. The Dark Film is a profound meditation on time, on the untold stories of our history, and on the act of human beholding - as well as Farley's most richly entertaining and rewarding collection to date.

Following the exceptional acclaim for his first two books, Farley might have been forgiven for resting on his laurels with his 'difficult third' - but Tramp in Flames instead finds him driving his formal ambition and remarkable imagination harder than ever. A book of considerable emotional daring and sometimes Wordsworthian sweep, Tramp in Flames is the work of a meticulous archivist of our cultural memory, and sets the palimpsest of the present hour on a light-box. It also shows Farley rapidly becoming one of the definitive English voices of the age. 'Resonant without being flashy . . . lines that will stick with you for a really, really long time' Mark Haddon 'Funny, observant, brilliantly musical . . . streetwise, erudite, elusive, but very accessible' Ruth Padel, Financial Times 'Farley is one of our most vital and engaging voices. Even a title can twist at the familiar, commanding our attention. He has the knack of both establishing and undermining the securities of memory purely through turn of phrase' W. N. Herbvert, Scotland on Sunday Poetry Book Society Recommendation

'Look - here's a poet of ferocious invention, a breathtaking wit that ushers us to epiphanies of grief and laughter, an encyclopaedic knowledge of hip ephemera that's never merely knowing, and a playful ear - which is, I note, an anagram of Paul Farley . . . What more do you want?' Michael Donaghy

Paul Farley's debut collection, The Boy From the Chemist is Here to See You, was one of the most celebrated debuts of the nineties. The poems in The Ice Age are as engaged and engaging as ever, but also display a new philosophical depth: Farley's gift is to uncover the evidence so often overlooked by less attentive observers, finding - in childhood games, dental records and dog-eared field guides - those details by which we are proven and elegized. The Ice Age will only enhance Farley's reputation as one of the most formally gifted and imaginative poets to have emerged in recent years.