Description
Book SynopsisIn his ambitious second full collection, Ross Sutherland is an uneasy observer of our age of inauthenticity, hacked computers and digital avatars. Emergency Window features new poems alongside excerpts from two recent sequences, including a hilarious and strangely prescient version of 'Little Red Riding Hood', a poem written using Google Streetview, sonnets inspired by the Street Fighter 2 video game, and a sequence of computer-generated translations of classic literature.
Surreal, funny, intelligent and experimental, these poems chart a search for meaning in a disintegrating world.
"If he were a piece of furniture, he would be an elegant high stool that felt uncomfortable and stylish at the same time."
Ian McMillan, BBC Radio 3
"Sparky, surprising, joyous poetry"
Roddy Lumsden
Ross Sutherland was born in Edinburgh in 1979. His first collection, Things To Do Before You Leave Town, was published by Penned in the Margins in 2009, followed by the limited-edition mini-book Twelve Nudes in 2010 and the free National Poetry Day e-book Hyakuretsu Kyaku in 2011. Ross regularly appears at the Aldeburgh, Manchester, Glastonbury and Latitude Festivals; he is taking his latest show, Comedian Dies in the Middle of Joke, to the Edinburgh Fringe 2012. He lives in Cambridge.
Trade ReviewLucid observations, smart conceits and insight into the contemporary world as a fragmented, self-constructed thing. - The Independent The images cohere and expand, making gloriously relevant new ones; the crows rising up in omen as ornate costumes burn is undercut by the pile of singed polyester flares and pink Mia Wallace wigs. Neither image can flatten the other, both floundering in the disconnect between feeling and circumstance. - Exeunt Magazine These poems have a particular beauty, liberated from any notion of original meaning which clears space for new, surprising significance. [... Sutherland's] engagement with the hyper- and sub-real is subtle and enjoyable. - The Literateur
Table of Contents555 Richard Branson The Rioter's Prayer Emergency Window You Made Something of Yourself Your Future with Us M-Bison Ox Zangief Infinite Lives Staples Poem Heard on Heart 105 Poem Looked Up on Google Streetview B-Side from Twelve Nudes: The Path Made Straight The Prison Librarian Chun Li The Circus E. Honda Poet in Residence in a Toyshop at Midnight Blanka The End of Our Marriage Dedication Liverish Red-Blooded Riffraff Hoo-ha The National Language: Child Emptying the Hundred Internals of Quebec Inside the Inverted Railroad of the Bilge New Editions of Windows It was Burnt from Displacement Two Seconds of the Future The 1,802 Londons Vorgefuehl
