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Biographical note: Howard Barker’s first play was performed at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in 1970. Subsequently, his works were played by the Royal Court, Royal Shakespeare Company, The Open Space Theatre, Sheffield Crucible and the Almeida. He is currently Artistic Director of The Wrestling School, a company established to disseminate his works and develop his theory of production. His work is played extensively in Europe, in translation, in The United States, and in Australia. He writes regularly for radio, both in England and Europe. He is the author of plays for marionettes and has written three librettos for opera. Howard Barker is the author of two works of theory, and five volumes of poetry. He is also a painter. His work is held in national collections in England (V&A, London) and Europe.
BIC Basic
EAN13: 9781844714520
ISBN: 9781844714520
Author: Howard Barker
Title: Sheer Detachment
Series: Salt Modern Poets
Product class: BB
Language: eng
Audience: General/trade
BIC subject category: CTCH1
Publisher: Salt Publishing
Pub date: 01-Mar-09
Extent: 80pp
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 11 mm
Weight: 120 gms
Supplier: Gardners Books
Supplier: Ingram Book Group
Supplier: Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability: NP
Price: GBP 12.99
Price: USD 23.95
Rights: World
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Short
description/annotation: Howard Barker’s catastophic vision is clearly visible in the sinister twilight of his new collection of poems. His world is filled with violence, conspiracy and transgression. The perpetrators of these acts are gaolers, dictators, faceless visitors, thieves and killers, dogs and Barker’s dispassionate narrators, staring over our bodies.
Main description: Howard Barker’s catastophic vision is clearly visible in the sinister twilight of his new collection of poems. His world is filled with violence, conspiracy and transgression. The perpetrators of these acts are gaolers, dictators, faceless visitors, thieves and killers, dogs and Barker’s dispassionate narrators, staring over our bodies.
We overhear of imminent danger and find ourselves witness to absurd atrocities in barely-sketched rooms. Or we may end up listening to the thoughts of Barker’s victims in flagrantly amoral vignettes and tableaux where household objects can gain a chilling significance. You can almost feel the falling temperature as you read these works, hear the footsteps ringing out, as the poet comes down the corridor to collect you.
Recognised as one of the leading playwrights
of his generation, Barker continues to explore human suffering and survival in poetry of terrifying intensity and emotional distance.
Table of contents:
Called In
Old Regime
Impending 1
Impending 2
Hard Hands Now
Found in the Ground
29th December
3rd January
12th February
16th June
Hiatus
The Loveless Move
Old Mad Still
A Slave Receives Instructions
The Great Servants
Morning, A Small State
The Losses
The Rumour She Gardens Naked
First 13th February
Second 13th February
Old War Somewhere Here
72
June 19th
Brute Avenue
June 20th
I Fling You
Darling the Word
In the Dark
Also Law
Are Your Hands Wet
Loiter
Detritus
Common
Only
Beggars?: Christ Exasperated
The Still
Mirrors
Swinging
Kill I
8th February
5th March
‘He lay judged in a small room’
Her Arse
23rd November
29th January
25th February
I Dog Dog I
Prodigal
11th May
The Small Sleeps
Arrival An Anxiety
The Route
Character
Powerless
November 26th
Some Language
Three Weeks in the Water
Casanova
12th May
A Bruise On Me
Can We Count On You?
I Asked
I Watched Priests
10th January
A Rage Came In
Sheer Detachment
In Bowls Or Stains View excerpt as PDF:  Click here to view a sample ( KB)
Excerpt from book:
Are Your Hands Wet
Are your hands wet with something
The bedridden enquires
Black stones lie on my eyes
And on my chest the carcass of a bear
Flung from an altitude
Who swum the air and died on tiles:
You walked with me in towns
Shaking their slogans from our hair
And your knees were grazed by walls
On which nothing was written and rewritten
Are your hands wet with something
Or are mine infinitely dry
Your skirt was costly and the mirrors
Of cars plucked the hem high over your thigh
Your breath smells of jugs
Jugs on a summer nail
Fetch the vagrant from the caravan
He has bided his time in gaols and chapels
Rehearsing his humility:
Let him clasp your beauty in his arms
And dancing over the frost fragile plantains
Trip noisily and die:
How liquid your palms are
Slippery with the single ejaculation of a saint:
How pear wood hard your arse
And blue veins string your life
As a scholar’s pen dithered from sleep
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Previous review quote: About as challenging as art gets without pulling weapons
on the audience. The Guardian |
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