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A Place in the WorldIain Bamforth![]()
Categories: 20th Century, 21st Century, British, Scottish
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: Paperback (128 pages) (Pub. Feb 2005) 9781857547603 Out of Stock
So he stood in his shoes
And he wondered, He wondered, He stood in his Shoes and he wondered. John Keats Written under the sign of Eros, builder and destroyer of cities, and prefaced by an epigraph from Keats, the poems in A Place in the World are about home and antipodes, identity as a shibboleth and institutions as leviathans, Pacific islands and raised beaches, Edens and new Jerusalems, the critical spirit and the need for continuity. Cradling Scotland's stony myths in his palm, the poet sets off for Europe, an old civilisation that can barely reconcile itself to having become a colony of its own Utopia. In his pocket is a battered copy of the civil philosophy, also out of Scotland, that lends the book its punning title. Somewhere in the looming shadow of the cities is the poet, still looking--like the Greek philosopher--for human beings. A Place in the World, Iain Bamforth's fourth collection, is his most lyrical, challenging and considered work to date.
Table of Contents
Third-Person Lion 1 A Charm for Europe 2 Tobias Smollett in the Var 3 Rough Sleeper 4 Disgruntlements 5 Voyage au Pays du Fer 6 Strasburg Event 11 Quatrain 11 Calvin's Architect 12 The Window 13 Baudelaire: Albatross 14 Questions for Chekhov 15 Diogenes Looking for Humans 16 A Vision 18 Gauguin: Self-Portrait near Golgotha 19 Glosses 20 Tongues and Claws 23 Eggs called Chaos 24 The Stone Toad 27 Coal Fish 29 Gideon's Bible in a Late Night Motel 30 Europa and the Whale 31 The Wound Man 33 The House-Boat 35 In the Republic of Virtue 35 Pig Melon Incarnation 36 Cares of a Family Man 38 Well and Hearth 38 A Boy in Dresden 39 From A to B and Back Again 40 The Decision 41 Clueless 42 Arrow, Bowstring, Hand and Eye 43 1909 Photograph of a Broken Hill Miner 44 Chanson 45 Proverbs and Maxims from the Hive 46 Baudelaire: The Cracked Bell 48 The Unreached 49 Travels with a Donkey to the Bridge of Europe 51 The Weight of a Day 52 Hope, Art and Labour 53 A Nest of Boxes for the Opening of the Scottish Parliament 56 Ten Years: A Psalm 61 A Promised Land 62 Angelology 63 Transparency: An Address 64 A Sport of Small Accidents 65 How Long is a Piece of String? 66 Trümmerfrauen, 1945 66 Hiding in the River to Escape the Rain 67 The Very Sound of Where We Are 68 A Distance from the Sea 69 Thomas as Imagined by Caravaggio 70 Joseph Beuys 71 All the Old Dears 72 By Further Knowing 73 Movement 74 Painting with Razors 75 Two Poems on Classical Themes 76 Frail Craft 77 Strange Weather 78 Bottler Names 79 The Guest 80 The Large Triumphal Chariot of Medicine 80 Only This 81 Family Virtues 82 An Informant to Alexander Carmichael 82 Baudelaire: Collecting my Thoughts 83 Gutenberg Wings 84 Alsace is an Island 85 King and Queen of the Most Sunken City 86 Heavenly City of the Twentieth Century 87 Falling Off the Map 88 Life of the Civil Servants 89 Song: It Makes Me Wrong 90 This 91 A Sceptical Examination of the Body of French Medicine 92 Salt of the Earth 93 Two Steps in the Phenomenology of Walking 94 Droit de cité 95 Bucket 96 Strasburgers on the Beach 97 Notes 100
Praise for Iain Bamforth
'Even at its most ornate, the style is not quite ostentatious - it's more akin to the apparently effortless figurations of an Olympic-class artist of the ice rink... it exemplifies Bamforth's all-encompassing curiosity and intellectual agility.'
Jonathan Buckley, TLS 'The wandering mind will find bountiful rewards in Iain Bamforth's Zest: Essays on the Art of Living... It is a remarkable, sometimes provocative, tour de force as the author escorts us from the Garden of Eden to Provence, from Apulia to Papua. For a series of incidental essays that have been described as "digressive and droll," Zest actually possesses a remarkable coherence. It is the perfect volume to dip into if you want respite from the social whirl of the upcoming festive season.' Nicky Gardner, Hidden Europe '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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