Chris Emery

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Biographical note:  Chris Emery was born in Oldham, Manchester in 1963. His work has appeared in numerous print and web journals including Jacket, Oxford Poetry, PN Review, Poetry Wales, The Rialto and Salt. He was anthologised in New Writing 8 (Vintage, 1999) and Identity Parade (Bloodaxe, 2010). He is a director Salt Publishing, Embrace Books and The Cover Factory. He lives in Great Wilbraham, England, with his wife and three children.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844718405
ISBN:  9781844718405
Author:  Chris Emery
Title:  Dr. Mephisto
Series:  Salt Modern Poets
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  DCF
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  23-Nov-10
Extent:  100pp
Height:  216 mm
Width:  140 mm
Thickness:  6 mm
Weight:  150 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  IP
Price:  GBP 9.99
Price:  USD 15.95
Rights:  World

Short description/annotation:  A tenth anniversary edition of Chris Emery’s black comedy debut, Dr. Mephisto, made simultaneously available in print and electronic form. Flamboyant, funny, poignant and excessive, Emery’s modernist work is a picaresque, historical road show of hell from the brink of the 21st Century.

Main description:  Dr. Mephisto is in the form of a long sequence of poems. It traces Mephistopheles as he ranges freely through time and space, at times a laconic observer, at others a thuggish participant, but always a presence wherever there is conflict and suffering and whenever there is work to be done. Far from being oppressive, this is an exciting and highly original work, whose exhilarating pace is set by Emery’s innovative use of language and form, and whose acerbic political edge keeps the vision sharp and fresh. Compelling, hard-hitting, and grimly funny, Dr Mephisto will be remembered long after being read, and a significant new poetic voice will have been recognised.

Table of contents:
Contents
Acknowledgements
The Pendulum
The Gift
The Levitation
Hermes Lives
Mephisto Sleeps
The Evocation Speech of Asmoday
Underground
The Flight
The Burial
The End
Sebastião
Köpfe
Mephisto’s Pockets
The Moment
The Scourge
The Hippogriff
The Crucifixion
Mephisto Sweeps the Desert
Mephisto Redivivus
Mephisto Deals the Tarot
The Prayer
Shulamith
The Mother
Lullaby
To Tease Contrariwise
Boom Ballast
Mattress Thought
Udder Music
Transformer
Exterminator
Pandemonium
Cleaving
Ariadne
Quoit
Melatonin
Zion
Dreck
Shulamith’s Night Song
Shulamith’s End Song
Dream Bunions
Bucket Elegy
Germinator
Generator
Drum Song
Zero Start Scenario
Notes

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Excerpt from book:  

Unpublished endorsement:  This is a remarkable debut collection by Chris Emery. He possesses an attack vocabulary and has the ambition to think the unthinkable. Cross yourself before reading Dr. Mephisto.

John Hartley Williams

Unpublished endorsement:  More Marlowe than Goethe, things really catch light when the lines go lyrical. Ghosts of punk offer up trills of the damned, but a secular scepticism is on keyboards. Think of Orson Welles and Marlene Dietrich in A Touch of Evil and dream of new dawns.

Drew Milne

Review quote:  Chris Emery’s Dr. Mephisto lets the Devil have a little fun and reminds me that eternal damnation can be a Godsend.

Simon Barraclough
Magma

Review quote:  Recreating a goldmine, an apt circle of Hell, he’s also creating a trope for the destructive greed and wealth of the consumer West.

Herbert Lomas
Ambit

Review quote:  A good first collection.

Tony Frazer
Shearsman Magazine

Review quote:  Vivid, pungent stanzas.

M.C. Caseley
Stride Magazine

Previous review quote:  Certainly you will not have read any other poetry book like this, and Goethe and Christopher Marlowe must surely have been looking approvingly over Chris Emery’s shoulder when he was writing, gasping at his command of language.

Anne Born
Leviathan Quarterly

Previous review quote:  These poems reimagine excruciatingly the ‘double life’ of the body itself, the life of nervous self-domination and subjection.

Keston Sutherland
Quid