Split Screen (Red Squirrel 2012) and Double Bill (forthcoming)

http://stjamesseveningpost.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/split-screen-poetry-inspired-by-film.html

Was thrilled to get a mention in this excellent review of Split Screen reading, even though I wasn’t present at that particular one:

Other voices ring more sure: Liane Strauss’s ‘The Dark Days are Done’ weighs audience expectations of Italy alongside those which shaped The Godfather‘s Corleone family, and sees Sonny Corleone’s death as that of an Icarus born from the Medici. It’s twinned with Luke Wright’s mordantly concise study of Michael Corleone’s character development, ‘Godfather’. Where these poems about cinema engage with their films as texts, it’s those on television personalities which make the case for the box in the corner as maker of the most enduring myths: Paul McGrane’s ‘And the doctor says’ adopts Tommy Cooper’s sense of rhythm to turn the story of his televised death on stage into a routine, though the reader is left to imagine what conjurer’s props would be most appropriate. Angela Topping’s ‘Doctor Love’ claims Jon Pertwee’s Doctor Who as a sex symbol for adolescent girls and as a model for teenage rebels, even as the poet’s maturation causes her to leave the Doctor behind. There was, as Naomi Woddis’s ‘Always Ours’ argues through the career of Diana Dors, always a pragmatic end to British postwar fantasies.

Matthew Kilburn

This anthology just keeps on giving. I’ve bought copies for friends who have enjoyed it. A follow up volume is planned and written, with even more poets stepping on the bus back to cult TV and film of the past. With Christmas coming, I do recommend this book to anyone, whether into poetry or not, as an entertaining and thought-provoking read about things that entertain us.

 

Buy it here: http://www.redsquirrelpress.com/SquirrelCAT.html or order it from a bookshop

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