A grounded yet playful collection from an assured poet, flexing his muscles into newer territory. As well as the deep lineage of rural landscapes that populated previous collections, here Johnstone treats us to an extended trip to the circus, where the glitz and thrill of the big top and its stunts are peeled back to allow us into physical and emotional rigour that forms the show's scaffold. Elsewhere poems transport you more literally through film and TV history, around Europe and into the past, again balancing between illusion and the tension that supports it in the more mundane real world. And throughout, the tone and language also plays an ingenious balancing act between the structured, rhyming and informal. This is a personal and expansive collection, honest and exploratory.
- ISBN10 1908376066
- ISBN13 9781908376060
- Publish Date 11 June 2014 (first published 31 May 2014)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 16 March 2021
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Arc Publications
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 103
- Language English