Description
Book SynopsisAnne Rouse is a keenly observant writer of spiky satirical portraits and shapely lyrics of the ordinary and the bizarre. Her latest book, "The Upshot", includes a new collection, "The Divided", which constructs a modern metaphysic out of love and the daily, set against the latent (sometimes tragic) divisions in contemporary society. The selection from three critically acclaimed earlier collections ranges from the lyrical exuberance of "Sunset Grill" to the vivid nocturnal surrealism of "The School of Night".
Trade ReviewAnne Rouse’s poems are watchful and amused, sardonic and appalled. They are also in the best sense political: the big picture of our whole society informs her miniatures of city life where dossers and shopping jostle for attention alongside love and death. -- Ruth Padel & Sean O'Brien * PBS Bulletin *
Rouse has honed her craft further to produce some lovely focused lyrics with a wonderful development in her tone. The sureness of Rouse’s touch is a pleasure to read throughout and The School of Night is her most moving volume yet. -- Andrew Neilson * Magma *
…this powerful collection…The reader is surprised and pleased and informed by the conclusions the poet leads us to, by her often poignant humour and shocks of transcendence that are rooted in a natural and unforced realism. -- Penelope Shuttle * Poetry London *
Rouse writes…with such convinced skewing of the expected angles, and with such precise anger and sympathy, that one is inclined to believe her as well as to admire the poems. -- Sean O'Brien * Sunday Times *
