Since 1987\'s Ghost Measures , Clarke has plied a unique phrasal poetics which made him a key figure in the advent of Linguistically Innovative Poetry.
Alert to the nightmare of history \'haunting Europe\' in \'memory\'s negotiable embrace\', these saturated, luminous poems cast the light of dark matter over a \'split / self species\' caught in the tensions between flesh and spirit (see the astonishing sonnet sequence \'Herodiad\') and facing the bleakest of futures: \'words illegible / in fading light.\' This is essential minutes-to-go, no-exit reading where \'unspeakable flesh\' is full of \'secret histories\' and \'word/-ghosts\' and, only if we\'re very lucky indeed, \'syntax rescues a / place named home.\' - Scott Thurston.
His encyclopedic European imagination, triggered by Brexit, here reprises central themes of a lifework in a variety of forms and sequences paying tribute to influences such as Laforgue, Michaux, Celan whilst forging their own razor-sharp enjambments and break-neck rhythms.
Since 1987\'s Ghost Measures , Clarke has plied a unique phrasal poetics which made him a key figure in the advent of Linguistically Innovative Poetry
