Zigzag: five sequences marks the welcome return of Anthony Rudolf - publisher, translator, autobiographer, essayist - to his first vocation, poetry. Apart from collaborations with artists, this is his first book containing poems for more than thirty years. Zigzag consists of five sequences: two verse, one prose and two combining prose and verse. Among the texts are a recitative in the voice of the author's grandfather, a story about Kafka for grownups written according to the conventions of a children's story, and a sequence of prose and verse after Schumann's Kinderszenen. Autobiography, poetry, documentary, fiction: the book zigs and zags with humour and lyrical lightness, complicating Rudolf's concerns with memory, time and loss.


Helena de Freitas' Poetry Choice

Praise for Anthony Rudolf's poetry:

...Rudolf's fine exact craftsmanship; no word or syllable wasted, so that each image is stark and true - George Mackay Brown, The Scotsman

Every poem like a new geometry - of suprises... A sort of sewing of a hyper-active intelligence to hypersenstive skin - Ted Hughes

Witty, precise, beautifully cadenced, and courageously exploratory - Robin Skelton, The Malahat Review



Cover painting Johannes Gumpp (1626-c.1646), self portrait 1646

Image c Uffizi Gallery, Florence