Phil Bowen

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Biographical note:  Phil Bowen was born in Liverpool in 1949 where he taught Drama until 1979. He has worked as a full-time writer, performer and teacher since 1994. Work from his first full collection ‘Variety’s Hammer’ was selected for The Forward Anthology of 1998. His biography of the Mersey Poets ‘A Gallery to Play to’ has recently been updated and re-published by Liverpool University Press and he written four plays for the stage.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844715077
ISBN:  9781844715077
Author:  Phil Bowen
Title:  Nowhere’s Far
Series:  Salt Modern Poets
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  CTCH1
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  28-Apr-09
Extent:  160pp
Height:  216 mm
Width:  140 mm
Thickness:  12 mm
Weight:  240 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  IP
Price:  GBP 9.99
Price:  USD 15.95
Rights:  World

Main description:  Nowhere’s Far as its title suggests is both close to the heart, immediately approachable and inhabitable, but also right out there in the world of the imagination where all sorts of strange things meet. Whether laugh-out-loud funny or staring straight into the abyss, Phil Bowen’s highly distinctive poems are written with great originality, rhythm and nerve. Here are poems that pass ‘the spelling test’ – casting a spell that in turn creates a distinct world whose landscape readers can inhabit for the poems’ duration. His voice is decidedly contemporary and commendably sparing of the first person singular and the merely observational.

His poetry is both celebratory and colourful yet at times menacingly dark in its uncompromising vision. He has always had a strong sense of the absurd and the surreal, and the book is rich in macabre comedy, romantic slants and theatrical cameos – including affectionate portraits of some of his favourite practitioners ranging from Philip Larkin and Leonard Cohen to Max Wall and Ken Dodd – but as the later poems reveal he combines a heightened sense of lyric with a deft touch and use of rhyme and form, his poetry constantly underpinned by the unwavering belief that poetry is increasingly important as a pagan stronghold in which the language lives.

Table of contents:
from The Professor’s Boots (1994)
Which Poet
About Larkin
Popping Her Cork
Take a Dream
The Professor’s Boots
The Lad Himself
Releasing The Dots ………….
from That Was Peter Glaze (1994)
Timing
The Poetry of Babies
Girl on a Bike
from Variety’s Hammer (1997)
Elvis Meets Hitler
The Tree in the Disco
Chubby’s Turn
Corrected
Behind the Landsdown
What’s the Darkness For??
Enough Said
Torn
Menace
Frank’s Old Mansion
What the Scarecrow Saw
Building Sight
When it Was Woven
What a Little Scarecrow Can Do
Worth a Shout
Cinders and Song
By a Cornish Bungalow
Stopping in Time
Kestrel Rock
Finding the Mermaid
Legoverland
Gallery
Sticks and Pipes
What was Underground
The Miss Garveys
Concrete Lace
Clock Life
How it Went
Thirteen in Sixty-Three
There’s a Place
Leaving Mum
What it Means
Coping With It
Dearly
Another Woman
Going
from Starfly (2004)
Starfly
The Passenger Twin
A Place Named Ask
Behind the Lines
A Little Chat
No Question
Dying’s Hard
The Time Being
When it Was the Ace of Clubs
Anyone Who’s Anyone
Stardom
The Old Matinees
Tragedy
The Blue Hand
The Cameo Killer
No More Mr Nice Guy
Hats Day
Blue Docs
Can Birds Sing Over the Sky
That’s Nothing
The Prince’s Love Song
Moonlight on the River
Fresh
Heartscript
Love Somehow
In Powys With You
Don’t Touch Blood
Wondering Why
What It Takes
The Whole of the Town
The Town Without Television
Survival
Slang
Soon
The End of Ink Street
New Poems
Nowhere’s Far
No Doubt
An Awful Thought
Like Poetry
Out of Time
A Good Road for Ships
Lost and Found
There Again
No Wonder
The Hell of It
In the First Place
Mister White
In my Own Light
This is the Door
By Chance
Cloud Nine
A Peck of Dirt
When the Field Commander Comes
In the Air

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Excerpt from book:  

What a Little Scarecrow Can Do

The scarecrow felt he had a poet in him.
The poet felt he had an apostrophe in him.
An apostrophe that wanted a page.
A page that wanted a bride.
A bride that needed a husband.
A husband who wanted a housewife.
The housewife who wanted a lover.
A lover who wanted to feel safe.
The safe that wanted the money.
The money that made a speech.
The speech that needed an actor.
An actor who needed the part.
The part that needed the whole.
The whole that wasn’t enough.
Enough that wasn’t enormous.
An enormous waste of talent.
Talent that lost the contest.
The contest that had its own rules.
Rules that were taught in the school.
The school with only one teacher.
A teacher who speaks at his pupils.
His pupils in need of a view.
A view of trees and fields.
Trees and fields and animals.
Animals who lived on a farm.
The farm with only one farmer
Who gave all the animals names.
And some of the names rhymed.
Some of the rhymes chimed.
And some of the sun shined
On the children who climbed
(behind) the stile:
And down the footpath
The poetry smiled.
The poetry that felt it had a scarecrow in it.

Unpublished endorsement:  A riotous assembly! Both in performance and on the page, Phil Bowen’s poems have always been unique, and it’s great to see them gathered together.

Brian Patten

Unpublished endorsement:  For those who say poetry that is deep and meaningful can’t be enjoyable, and those who think poetry that is enjoyable can’t be deep and meaningful, think again. Phil Bowen’s is. Reading him is like suddenly being asked to dance.

Selima Hill

Previous review quote:  Unusual and striking … great fun to read.

Sophie Hannah
The Frogmore Papers

Previous review quote:  Lively, vital and accomplished.

Sylvia Kantaris

Previous review quote:  Phil Bowen’s poems crackle with vitality … a skilful and pleasure giving poet.

DM Thomas

Previous review quote:  Auden-like public statements mixed with the bleakness of Larkin….dark comedy and irresistible humour combined with melancholic sensuousness.

Belinda Cooke
Shearsman Magazine

Previous review quote:  He segues the serious into the funny, abstractly suggesting and nudging emotions from his reader, his use of faded stars and stand-ups acting as vehicles, not subjects. There is also a poem here that is startlingly good called ‘Tragedy', a touching and harrowing little ball of encapsulation that any poet would be proud of.

Tim Allen
Terrible Work