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Biographical note: Philip Wells performs as The Fire Poet everywhere from St Paul’s Cathedral to Channings Wood Prison, from Buckingham Palace to children’s hospices, from 11 Downing Street to children’s psychiatric units, in front of everyone from Robbie Williams to Gordon Brown. He has written an opera about Thomas Becket which was performed in Canterbury Cathedral. He has collaborated with rock bands, photographers, sculptors, painters and fire jugglers. Currently he is making poetry films on Second Life.
BIC Basic
EAN13: 9781844714797
ISBN: 9781844714797
Author: Philip Wells
Title: Horse Whispering in the Military Industrial Complex
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: 96pp
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 12 mm
Weight: 144 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: This is the first collection of the lyrical new age, a fusion of Wordsworth, Eminem and Bob Dylan that rings and sings with this time and its truth. It’s an accessible, fabulous guide to the deep and the light. Zeitgeist with zest, enlightenment without drugs, it points the way to a brave and shining heroic reality threatened by the sham sheen of the virtual/material egocelebrity monster.
Main description: Horse Whispering is the introduction to a poetic renaissance — it rocks the boat of poetry and yet rocks the cradle of song like a forgotten lullaby. Its revelatory, musical language is accessible and challenging, wild and formal, energetic and sensitive, radical and traditional, as old as the hills and as new as tomorrow. Hiphop sonnets fuse with primal screams and rococo villanelles — fast cars and vigilantes, sabre teeth and prison tales, sit alongside dying breaths and mother’s epiphanies; prophecies and satirical nonsenses vie for space with incantations, pseudo-rants and messianic monologues. Forms are lost and found. The music of poetry is reignited. A lyrical renaissance fuses Eminem with Shakespeare, Freddie Mercury with Lewis Carroll, Steven Berkoff with Dylan Thomas. Impossible futures and ideals clash with nightmare scenarios of genome madness and heart-withering idiocy.
It’s a cry from the heart of the wilderness, a lamentation from the deep, an exhortation from the other side, an alarm bell from the kingdom, a bloody exciting skull-peel of a read. It’s the first concept album of poetry. It’s a neutron bomb. In it the silence is articulate at last. Poetry has long been Radio 3 waiting for Classic fm to happen. Welcome to Kiss fm, Radio 1 and Classic fm rolled into one! It’s the Eminem of literature, the Muhammad Ali of the word.
Table of contents:
We Have Come
Hallowed Ground
Uncle Tim
Creators
Jinja
Sorceress
Joyriding
The Storm Of Creation
Falling Apart
The Academy
The Footballer in the Square
Following
Reclaiming the Years
Blow Up The Dam
The Rock-Me Timing Bang
Weapons Of Mass Distraction
School
I Want It
The Awakening Of The Tribe
There Will Be Poets
St. George’s Day
Spirit & Letter
The Great Rift Valley
On Coming To Power
Lock Me In
Find Me
Goddess
Search
A List Of British Place Names
Vote
Panma
Already
Pope’s Tower, Stanton Harcourt
Dungeons
True Breath
Memory Tree
Logos
Answering Nechterne
Dying Wishes
Visitor
Skenfrith Castle
To Change
Burn This Page
She Thanks Him
Neuromemo
The Revolution Of Revelations
Johnny 600
Nature Poem
Home Comforts
Dragon Song
Horse Whispering in the MIC
A Passer-By Demands Another Miracle
Page & Stage
Fire
Bwindi Impenetrable National Park
Walk Out
Sunday Morning
Eastbourne Cliffs
If Everyone Did View excerpt as PDF:  Click here to view a sample (57 KB)
Excerpt from book:
Pope’s Tower, Stanton Harcourt
for the Gascoignes
Visitors come to see the pane of glass that bears his name.
Through it he’d seen young lovers struck by lightning,
Remarked that the chaste had died of the clap.
In this chapel he’d raged at the organ
With his rhythmic fire in a chair
Carved to fit the hunch of his back.
My sister was christened here, her marriage
Blessed. Behind the altar a thousand years
Of family names observe our notable moments.
I walked here with her across formal gravel.
School shoes scratched the bowed flagstones.
My father in a green waterproof jacket
Towered between us in the doorway?—
Still as the effigies?—?and faced the coffin.
He squeezed us into the folds of his coat
Cold to my ears, screeching like knife on glass,
Then silent as in numb surrender I listened
To my father’s calm in its coat of stone
Until the tower broke into a primal heaving sob,
Shaking the stones and the organ pipes
As the names of a thousand years flowed away.
Previous review quote: Full of surprises, life and art. Ted Hughes Previous review quote: His poetry is a revelation. The Scotsman Previous review quote: Wells is superb. Richard Morrison
The Times Previous review quote: The REAL poet Laureate. Radio Five Live |
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