Description

Book Synopsis

Not Esperanto ! Desperanto is the universal language of despair !

It is spoken by the hopeless, learned by the luckless and sung by the broken armies of losers, lovers and lefties everywhere. It is the literary language of the More or Less Deceived.

With a bit of help from William Blake, Jake Thackray, Philip Larkin and Georges Perec, Mike Wilson offers a beginner''s guide to the emotional grammar of Desperanto, where defeat is a regular verb, hope declines and the future is always conditional.

Combining traditional form and formal experiment, playground wit and serious jokes, politics, people and poetry, Desperanto is a primer of crossed lines, crossed swords, cross words, crosswords and the c-word. It is a rough guide to the dialects of despair.

Devastating and beautiful. Adrian Mitchell (the shadow poet laureate)

Desperanto

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    A Paperback / softback by Mike Wilson

    £7.95

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    Order before 4pm tomorrow for delivery by Fri 16 Oct 2026.

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      Book details

      Publisher Smokestack Books
      Published 1 February 2009
      ISBN-13 9780955402876
      978-0955402876
      ISBN-10 0955402875

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      Not Esperanto ! Desperanto is the universal language of despair !

      It is spoken by the hopeless, learned by the luckless and sung by the broken armies of losers, lovers and lefties everywhere. It is the literary language of the More or Less Deceived.

      With a bit of help from William Blake, Jake Thackray, Philip Larkin and Georges Perec, Mike Wilson offers a beginner''s guide to the emotional grammar of Desperanto, where defeat is a regular verb, hope declines and the future is always conditional.

      Combining traditional form and formal experiment, playground wit and serious jokes, politics, people and poetry, Desperanto is a primer of crossed lines, crossed swords, cross words, crosswords and the c-word. It is a rough guide to the dialects of despair.

      Devastating and beautiful. Adrian Mitchell (the shadow poet laureate)

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