Tom Chivers

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Biographical note:  Tom Chivers was born in London in 1983. A writer, editor and promoter, he is Director of Penned in the Margins, Co-Director of London Word Festival and Associate Editor of Tears in the Fence. He was Poet in Residence at The Bishopsgate Institute, London. A limited edition sequence entitled The Terrors was published by Nine Arches Press in 2009. How To Build A City is his first full collection.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844715640
ISBN:  9781844715640
Author:  Tom Chivers
Title:  How To Build A City
Series:  Salt Modern Poets
Product class:  BB
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  CTCH1
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  08-Jun-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:  IP
Price:  GBP 12.99
Price:  USD 23.95
Rights:  World

Short description/annotation:  POETRY BANK CHOICE. How To Build A City is the Crashaw Prize-winning debut collection of poetry by Tom Chivers. It is a poetic interrogation of the twenty-first century urban experience, peopled by ghosts of London’s past as well as the distinctly modern spectres of international terrorism, spam email and the credit crunch.

Main description:  POETRY BANK CHOICE. How To Build A City is the Crashaw Prize-winning debut collection of poetry by Tom Chivers. It is a poetic interrogation of the twenty-first century urban experience, drawing on the history, culture, society and topography of London. Chivers takes his cue from radical writers such as Iain Sinclair and Barry MacSweeney to create an impressionist poetry, marked by playful riddling, found texts and unusual juxtapositions. How To Build A City is peopled by ghosts of London’s past as well as the distinctly modern spectres of spam email, international terrorism and the credit crunch.

The title piece is a choppy, sardonic investigation of contemporary East London, a travelogue that never really leaves Liverpool Street Station. Some of the poems are personal accounts of love and loss, including ‘Thom, C & I’, a long sequence of lyrical fragments cut from a diary written by the poet’s mother. Other poems take the reader away from the city to the fenlands of Medieval East Anglia, apple-heavy Himalayan gardens and the bleak uplands of Northern England.

How To Build A City captures the mood of a fluctuating, unstable metropolis that is continually coming to terms with multiple and conflicting identities.

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Table of contents:
Part I
Tube
This is yogic
Citizen
Rush Hour
Tina is a Rottweiler
Seven Varieties of Knot
Stopping Doctor Syntax
Queer Things in Egypt
The Coder
Your Name Has Been Randomly Selected
Big Skies over Docklands
The Trial of Margery
Shaikh and the Fruit Pickle
Invasion
A Tourist’s Guide to the East End
Hasty Excise
Fifteen Days
How To Build A City
Part II
Snapshot
Iconic
Marpha
Newborn
Guthlac
The Voyages of Ottar and Wulfstan
On Kinder Scout
Shatton, Kinder
Working in Stone
Postmark Tullamore
Photographs
Paramnesiac
Thom, C and I

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Excerpt from book:  

Stopping Doctor Syntax
after Thos. Rowlandson

Stopping Doctor Syntax requires
a bung or a brace of long pistols.

Note the jawline of horse and rider
as they rear up, almost rampant

with unspoken vowels, consonants
and crunchy glottal stops. Too old

for Punch & Judy but that same chin,
that same grin, as in Losing His Way

or Pursued by a Bull or Loses his Wig
or Bound to a Tree by Highwaymen

or Visits a Boarding School for Young
Ladies. The stumbling schoolmaster

sees all. Black coat. Puff of white
horse-hair and a chin for escapades.

His good steed Grizzle, all skin and
bones, seems more human than he.

Georgian admen; origami of London
paving stones; John Bull's long-horned

topper; finally stopped with a stopper,
a plug and clot for his Taurean neck,

a flourish and fleck from his reed-pen
and then, the final Dance of Death.

Unpublished endorsement:  Tom Chivers’ debut collection excites with its loose and fiery language play. Beneath the linguistic fireworks lurks a steely vision of London past and present that is contemporary, inventive and substantial.

David Caddy

Unpublished endorsement:  With How To Build A City Tom Chivers has created a rich and challenging collection that reflects all that is beautiful and disturbing in the city. These poems speak civic rhythms; they mimic the sway and staccato motion of the city. Poems like ‘Seven Varieties of Knot’ and ‘The Trial of Margery’ also show how precise and technically adept Chivers is as a poet; with ‘T, C & I’ and ‘How To Build A City’ he shows an experimental and innovative flair with language and form. But this is also a personal work; a human text. Poems such as ‘Postmark Tullamore’ and ‘Photographs’ are deeply moving as well as unsettling. This is an ambitious and brave collection from a poet with a distinctive voice, one which will deepen our understanding of the city that lives in us.

Anthony Joseph

Previous review quote:  Dark London history, dredged and interrogated, spits and fizzes with corrosive wit. Language-receipts sustain the necessary illusion. IT MATTERS. It matters: the weight and pace of delivery, the balance of breath. Tom Chivers understands the risks he risks, the play in a taught rope. ‘I'll ghost-write, if you ask.

Iain Sinclair

Previous review quote:  Tom Chivers has a striking, individual voice and a powerful one.

Patricia Prime
NHI Review

Previous review quote:  Tom Chivers’ sardonic wit created a sense of a London which was always out to crap on his shoulder.

George Ttoouli
Gists & Piths