Andy Brown

Biographical note:  Andy Brown is Director of the Centre for Creative Writing at Exeter University. His recent books include Hunting the Kinnayas (Stride, 2004), From a Cliff (Arc, 2002) and of Science (Worple, 2001, with David Morley). Andy Brown studied Ecology, a discipline that informs both his poetry and his criticism, which appears in The Salt Companion to the Works of Lee Harwood (Salt, 2006). He was previously a Centre Director for the Arvon Foundation’s creative writing courses, and has been a recording musician.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844713462
ISBN:  9781844713462
Author:  Andy Brown
Title:  The Fool and the Physician
Series:  Salt Modern Poets
Product class:  BB
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  DCF
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  15-Jan-12
Extent:  96pp
Height:  198 mm
Width:  129 mm
Thickness:  12 mm
Weight:  144 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  IP
Price:  GBP 12.99
Price:  USD 23.95
Rights:  World

Short description/annotation:  Exciting contemporary poetry from one of Britain’s best known and respected younger poets. Full of ingenuity, play and formal experiment, both funny and curious, these poems explore the imagery of Clowns and Fools, and respond to the extraordinary paintings of human folly by Hieronymus Bosch

Main description:  Exploding with Carnivalesque and antic energy, The Fool and the Physician shows the formal range and wit of Andy Brown’s poetry, from traditional lyric forms such as pantoums, sonnets and ballads, to paradelles, prayers, prose poems, and many playful devices inspired by the authors of the OuLiPo.

The poems center on the figure of the Clown and the Fool, exploring the meanings and associations attached to these characters. In part one, clowns career into space, up to heaven, knock at our front doors and expound upon the end of the world. The second half of the book is based on some of the remarkable paintings of Hieronymus Bosch – from direct responses to his works, to personal poems, or the more tangential approaches such as the densely erotic Garden of Earthly Delights – playing off Bosch’s extraordinary representations of fools and visions of human folly.

Table of contents:
I. A Clown in the Moonlight
Clown in Space
The Clown’s Prayer
A Clown in the Moonlight
Zugunruhe
A Circus Paradelle
Clown Rondeau
Sad Clown Triolet
Ballad of the Fool
Portrait of a Man Falling Over
Clown Alley
Haiku
Clown in Heaven
Clown School
Fool Street
Egg Register
All Clowns Exit Running
Pretending to be Me
The Lord of Misrule
The Fool on ‘The End of the World’
II. The Fool and the Physician
The Garden of Earthly Delights
The Adoration of the Magi
The Ergotist
Jeroen van Aken
The Forest that Hears and the Field that Sees
The Departure
The Haywain
Ship of Fools
Rhyme
Ecce Homo
Fools for Christ
The Seven Deadly Englynion
Chimeras
Hieronymus Bosch
Curse on a Wedding
The Cure of Folly — a definitional poem
The Truth About the War
The World Egg
Notes on the Poems

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Excerpt from book:  

Clown Alley

'Why is the clown so sad?’ the small girl asked herself, as she tiptoed through the ruined curio shops outside the circus compound. It had been raining all day and, although it was late and she was contented, her hat and clothes were mud. A crow flew down and landed on the fence behind her shoulder.

'Maybe he isn't sad at all,’ the bird replied. ‘Maybe he's happy and it only sounds like sadness, because you hear it through sad ears.'

'You mean to say the clown is really happy?'
'I don't know. Why don't you ask him yourself?’ The scavenger of reason flew away.

The girl, with gracious eyes, approached the clown. ‘Clown?’ she said. The clown looked up. ‘You lonely?'

The clown considered what she'd asked and smiled. ‘Everyone must chop through Time,’ he said, ‘playing, working, making others laugh. Yet what is that but a one way loop that leads to becoming a forgotten man? After the rush to the centre of the ring, the ricorso to the solitude of the road …'

The small girl shuffled her shoes. ‘What must one do to be a clown?’ she asked.

'Why, one must be a clown, of course!'

'And what is that?'

'To remain in incredible light, yet embrace its promised darkness; to forget the present in favour of tomorrow; to never forget that the world is there and that everyone is people, even you. One must be alone — no soul for days — and open one's eyes to the yawning heart of things …'

That's more like it! the small girl thought.

'And one more thing,’ the clown went on.

'What's that?’ The little girl, intrigued.

'A secret.'

'Being … ?'

'When you're out there throwing knives, always aim with purpose for the heart.'

Unpublished endorsement:  Lyrical precision and infinite jest, as funny and curious as it is poignant and moving. These are poems that teach us there is no dignity but in recognising our own ludicrousness; they teach us to drop our pretences and relax; then they pie us in the face.

Luke Kennard

Unpublished endorsement:  Vivid and tangible, there is a real wit that at times makes me laugh out loud, a true learning, and a gentle humanity to these tender-hearted poems.

Lee Harwood

Unpublished endorsement:  Andy Brown is one of our most interesting and exciting younger poets. With its love of ideas and language, his work demonstrates that there need be no barriers in poetry; that the philosophical, the lyrical and the playful can be combined in work of assured and generous vision.

John Burnside