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Compositional Bonbons Placate

Miles Champion

Cover Picture of Compositional Bonbons Placate
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press
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  • Language speaks.
    A pear is both itself and another ship.
    Turn not pale, beloved snail-what is interesting
    is at best of limited importance, forks
    the least threatening aspect.
    A shoe without langue will not last, for it's
    uncertainty shod. A green saucer.
    Pressed cogs of a known coinage. Cleft
    pseuds to knoll.


    from `I Have a Paintbrush in My Hand to Colour a Triangle'


    Compositional Bonbons Placate, Miles Champion's first full-length collection, is the work of a poet continually finding new directions, new methods. His concern with a poetry in which the signifier is not overwhelmed by the signified suggests L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry, yet the poems-while not conventional-are always emotionally accessible, exploring a range of forms through language poignant but unabashed. The poetry of Tom Raworth and John Ashbery is a visible influence; other pieces take their bearings from the work of Ted Berrigan, Clark Coolidge, Ray DiPalma. Champion never imitates: everything is made new, becomes grist for the dialectical mill.
    Miles Champion was born in Nottingham in 1968. He edited Tom Raworth’s As When (Carcanet, 2015) and Ted Greenwald’s The Age of Reasons (Wesleyan University Press, 2016), and, with Trevor Winkfield, co-authored How I Became a Painter (Pressed Wafer, 2014). He lives in Brooklyn, New York. ... read more
    Praise for Miles Champion 'The pleasure is that each poem is a different kind of challenge . . . the invention is spectacular and always 'up'.'
    Larry Price
    'By turns playful, insightful, erudite and essential, this is a poetry for the fluctuating times that we live in... Brilliant stuff. A Full Cone is one of my books of the year.'
    Andrew Taylor, Stride
     'Witness the cascades of words and listen to the silence between lines. The interstitial quietus common to Champion's many concrete excursions acts to vivify the text which it divides, so that the outrageous concatenation of everyday cultural artefacts is rendered explosive.'
    Steve Whitaker, The Yorkshire Times
     'It has often been noted that the pace at which Miles Champion's brilliantly intelligent poems unfold is rapid. Ideas and images tumble into words and the words become present as moments of conceptual or emotional consequence. But, though high velocity is in the making of the poems, there is no swift taking away. The moments aren't rescinded; the poems are not a demonstration of lyric evanescence. Champion's work, rather, is about phenomenological consequence, and consequence lingers, lasts. This is a collection of monumental significance - and the work is gorgeous.'
    Lyn Hejinian
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