'It's good to lose something you don't really need every now and then,
an item of clothing, some hair, a tooth, a piece of one's mind. A tree
of course, knows this.
Once we left the family bible out on the lawn overnight
to soak up the late summer dew, and the next day
we kneaded the bloated black pulp and
put it in the oven to bake
And when the door opened
a cinema of black birds ....


from 'Divertimento'
            

Jeremy Over's poetry creates a world of delight and amazement; in the face of language, love and an elusive reality which seems eternally beyond the realm of rational control. His cornucopia spills out pineapples, watermelons, unstitched shoes and flocks of birds from the baked remains of the waterlogged family bible. He dares to glance down from vertiginous perspectives and the laughter his poems produce is bright and innocent. There is nothing reductive in his ironies. He draws on Neruda, Stevens, Traki and more, but readers will feel in his work the pressure of the Lorca of Poeta en Nueva York and the tonalities of Laforgue.

The poems rarely break entirely from a narrative core, yet they challenge the current orthodoxy of poetry as storytelling on every level. His is an important new voice and this is a glittering first collection.