Peter Reading was one of the most original and controversial British poets of the post-war period: angry, uncompromising, gruesomely ironic, hilarious and heartbreaking as funny as he was disconcerting. He was a prodigiously skilful and technically inventive poet, mixing the matter and speech of the gutter with highly sophisticated metrical and syllabic patterns to produce scathing and grotesque accounts of lives blighted by greed, meanness, ignorance, phony media flimflam, political ineptness and cultural impoverishment. Each of his collections is self-contained, as carefully constructed and plotted as a novel, interweaving voices and narrative strands which can now be seen to link the 24 books which make up his Collected Poems. This was published in three volumes from Bloodaxe: Poems 1970-1984 (1995), Poems 1985-1996 (1996) and Poems 1997-2003 (2003). He subsequently produced two later collections, -273.15 (2005) and Vendange Tardive (2010). He died in 2011. Volume 1 of his Collected Poems includes an Introduction by Isabel Martin and was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. The collections included (in full) are: Water and Waste (1970), For the Municipalitys Elderly (1974), The Prison Cell & Barrel Mystery (1976), Nothing For Anyone (1977), Fiction (1979), Tom o' Bedlams Beauties (1981), Diplopic (1983), 5x5x5x5x5 (1983) and C (1984).
Recenzijos
Reading has spent 25 years creating a body of work which vindicates Tom Paulins description of him as the unofficial laureate of a decaying England Now that his entire corpus, astonishing in its range and integrity, is available, it is hard to see how Readings role has for so long been under-recognisedReading has completed a quarter-century masterpiece which has successfully blended the personal, the national and the global. The result is an epic lament for a species given to cruelty and self-destruction, employing a vast array of traditional forms and genres. -- Robert Potts * Guardian *
Introduction 13(14) Isabel Martin FOR THE MUNICIPALITYS ELDERLY (1974) *asterisked poems were first published in Water and Waste (1970) Fall* 27(1) Embarkation* 27(1) Earthworks* 28(1) Plague Graves* 29(1) Brabyns Park* 30(1) November 6th* 31(1) Letter in Winter* 31(3) Baigneur* 34(1) Chez Vous* 35(1) Severn at Worcester* 36(1) Raspberrying* 37(1) Stills* 38(1) Early Closing 39(1) Nomenclator* 39(1) Spring Letter* 40(2) Aeschylus* 42(1) Juvenilia* 42(1) For K.J. (aged 3) 43(1) Chiaroscuro* 44(1) Removals* 45(1) Mnemonic (for N.H.) 46(1) New Year Letter 47(3) For the Municipalitys Elderly 50(1) Duo 51(1) Curfew 52(1) Fossil 53(1) Easter Letter 54(2) Almshouse 56(1) St Jamess* 57(2) Mortimer Forest 59(1) Juncture 59(2) Combine 61(1) Burning Stubble 61(1) Night-Piece 62(1) Lapse 63(1) Horticulture* 64(1) Dead Horse* 65(1) Dirty Linen* 66(3) THE PRISON CELL & BARREL MYSTERY (1976) Early Stuff 69(2) Widow 71(1) Absentees 71(1) Nocturne 72(1) Equinox 73(1) Kwickie Service 74(1) Us in The Ship 74(1) Mycologia 75(1) Trio 76(6) Otto Van Bumph 82(1) Mem-sahib 83(1) Correspondence 84(2) Luncheon 86(1) Discarded Note 87(1) Prolonged Look 88(1) Ballad 89(4) The Prison Cell & Barrel Mystery 93(4) A Mon Sevl Desir 97(1) Thanksgiving 97(1) Near-Miss 98(1) Duologues 99(2) Soiree 101(1) Menage a Trois 101(4) NOTHING FOR ANYONE (1977) Hymn 105(1) Sonnet 105(1) ``Iuppiter ex alto periuria ridet amantum 15s 6d 106(3) Diptych 109(1) On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring 109(1) The John o Groats Theory 110(3) Almanac 113(2) Response 115(1) Placed by the Gideons 116(1) Post-Dated 117(1) Travelogue 118(4) Dr Coopers Story 122(1) Address Protector 122(2) Eavesdropped 124(1) Cut Costly Research! 125(1) Something for Everyone!!! 126(1) Nothing For Anyone 127(2) 10 x 10 x 10 129(3) Zygmunt 132(1) The Con Men 132(1) Receipt (1793) 133(4) FICTION (1979) Fiction 137(1) Early Morning Call 138(1) Its Small World 139(1) Proposed Increases 140(1) Y - X 140(1) 5 141(3) And Now, a Quick Look at the Morning Papers 144(1) Festival 145(2) An Everyday Story of Countryfolk 147(1) Choreograph 148(2) You Cant Be Too Careful 150(1) Madamooselle - A Conversation 151(1) Inter-City 152(3) Parallel Texts 155(1) Mens Talents in Difcours... 156(3) In State 159(1) Clues 159(1) Interview 160(1) The First Three Minutes &c. 161(1) Mystery Story 162(3) New Start 165(1) Opinions of the Press 166(2) Remaindered 168(1) Notes 169(4) TOM OBEDLAMS BEAUTIES (1981) ? 173(1) Concord 174(3) Alma Mater 177(1) Hardfhip Aboard American Sloop The Peggy 178(2) Eclogue 180(1) Tom o Bedlams Beauties 181(1) Bereft 182(1) Limns 183(1) Wandering 184(1) Four Poems 185(2) Interior 187(1) Artemus Wardrobe 188(1) Visit 189(1) Amulet 190(1) Some of Their Efforts 191(3) Ornithological Petrarchan 194(1) Phrenfy 194(2) About How Many? 196(1) 65th 197(1) The Euphemisms 197(1) Tanka 198(1) Between the Lines 199(1) A Departure 200(1) Legacies 200(2) Testimoliums 202(1) There seem to be so many of them 203(1) Song of the Bedsit Girl 204(2) Commitment 206(1) ? 207(1) Notes 208(3) DIPLOPIC (1983) At Marsden Bay 211(1) Editorial 212(1) Dark Continent 213(1) Receipt 214(1) The Terrestrial Globe 214(2) The Big Cats 216(1) Minima 217(1) Telecommunication 217(1) War Artistes 218(1) Mnemonics 219(1) P.S. 219(1) Hints 220(1) At Home 220(3) Mynah Petrarchan 223(1) After Sanraku Koshu 224(1) Sortie 224(1) 15th February 225(1) Found 226(1) Stedmans 226(2) A Recollection 228(1) Nips 228(3) Ex Lab 231(5) From a Journal (c. 1917, in the authors possession) 236(1) Englished (ii. 458) 236(1) Englished (iii. 349-83) 237(1) Epithalamium 238(2) Carte Postale 240(1) Between the Headlines 240(2) Admissions 242(1) Finds 242(2) Resolution 244(1) Tryst 245(1) Pacepacker 246(3) 5x5x5x5x5 (1983) 5x5x5x5x5 249(28) C (1984) C 277
Peter Reading (1946-2011) was born in Liverpool. After studying painting at Liverpool College of Art, he worked as a schoolteacher in Liverpool (1967-68) and at Liverpool College of Art, where he taught Art History (1968-70). He then worked for 22 years as a weighbridge operator at an animal feedmill in Shropshire, a job which left him free to think, until he was sacked for refusing to wear a uniform introduced by new owners of the business. His only break was a two-year residency at Sunderland Polytechnic (1981-83). After leaving Liverpool, he lived for 40 years in various parts of Shropshire, in recent years in Ludlow. The benevolence of Americas Lannan Foundation rescued him from poverty. He was the first writer to hold the one-year Lannan writing residency in Marfa, Texas (in 1999), and is the only British poet to have won the Lannan Award for Poetry twice, in 1990 and 2004, as well as the only poet to read an entire lifes work for the Lannan Foundations DVD archive his filmed readings for Lannan (made in 2001 and 2010) of 26 poetry collections make up the only archive of its kind. His other honours included the Cholmondeley Award, the Dylan Thomas Award for Diplopic (1983), and the Whitbread Prize for Poetry for Stet (1986). Work in Regress was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize in 1997. All his poetry is published by Bloodaxe Books, along with Isabel Martins critical study Reading Peter Reading (2000). His first collection was Water and Waste (1970), published when he was 24, and his last, 26th collection, was Vendange Tardive, published forty years later in 2010. Each of his collections is self-contained, as carefully constructed and plotted as a novel, interweaving voices and narrative strands which can be seen to link the 24 books which make up his Collected Poems, published in three volumes: 1: Poems 1970-1984 (1995), 2: Poems 1985-1996 (1996) and 3: Poems 1997-2003 (2003). His later collections from Bloodaxe are -273-15 (2005) and Vendange Tardive (2010).
