Description
Book SynopsisIn Arcimboldo’s famous seventeenth-century Mannerist portraits, the sitter’s face is composed of organic matter. In subordinating a mixture of elements into an unrelated whole, imagination can transform the medium of expression itself. Tim Liardet’s Arcimboldo’s Bulldog: New and Selected Poems spans nine of his ten award-winning collections and adds new poems, fresh produce, reconfiguring his life’s work to date. The book draws on his two T. S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted collections The Blood Choir (2006) and The World Before Snow (2015). Vivid images, large abstractions, symbols, allegory, elegy, provocation, confession and lyric find a necessary place in his work. Arcimboldo’s Bulldog records achievement and includes a promissory note towards his next collection.
Trade ReviewThese intense long-lined verses freeze the chance encounter in cubist arrangements played out in echo chambers and halls of mirrors, as the lovers adjust to their new situation. The lyric line is stretched to accommodate their instability, as images become more fractured. This technique brilliantly succeeds in describing the aftermath of one meeting, each moment in the process of exploding. Liardet immerses us in an installation of momentous force.’ - Pascale Petit (T. S. Eliot Prize Judge’s Report, 2016); `Tim Liardet’s poetry is a concentration of intelligence, fierce but accurate feeling and an encompassing imagination ... Arcimboldo’s Bulldog is the work of an exemplary poet at the top of his craft.’ - George Szirtes
