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Open WorkingsIain Bamforth![]()
Categories: 20th Century, British, Scottish
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: Paperback (80 pages) (Pub. Oct 1996) 9781857542578 Out of Stock
As like or not
there'd be a long row: each dressed in his black work suit, mark of the Cyclops on his gradual brow, lunch in a casket belted to his waist, swinging, swinging the hypothetical bird -- every last one as trench-quiet as the walking wounded holders of tokens from the broken hill. from 'Broken Hill'
Iain Bamforth's third collection applies carnival licence to various kinds of histories: personal, symbolic, ethnographic, social -- even to a history of representations in the 101 epigrams and 'autographemes' which make up the Paris sequence 'Impediments'. Away from the city, the series of narratives of patients based on his experience as a country doctor in the south west of Scotland, and the harsher poems set in a mining town in the Australian outback contribute to the social history of their communities as they examine how far a rural doctor -- 'a fortunate man' in John Berger's phrase -- can negotiate against the sheer weight of common sense. Traditional knowledge and applied science start from different kinds of literalness:this book acknowledges the claims of both and stands at some personal risk in the breach between them. With rigour and style, intelligence is brought to bear on the natural extravagance of the spirit, and on the resilience of people living at the mercy of circumstances.
Praise for Iain Bamforth
'This collection is a joy to read, full of so much nuance, and persuasive language, a permanent wistfulness that never strays into the twee and the constant sense of travel, of movement and growth.'
Matt Macdonald, Scottish Review of Books |
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