-273.15 - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 185224724X ISBN 13: 9781852247249

Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd

Synopsis

After mapping Britain's national decline over thirty years through 25 books of poetry, Peter Reading has reinvented himself as a writer in his 21st-century work. The bitter social critic has become poetry's Millennial prophet of doom, directing his venom and sorrow at the destruction of the world's wildlife and environment. His latest book -273.15 [absolute zero] is a lament, a tirade, a disaster warning, and an anthropologist's catalogue of our final expedition addressed to an earlier survivor of global catastrophe, Noah of the Flood.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

In his first new collection since the third volume of his Collected Poems (2003), English avant-garde stalwart Reading points his trademark rage, sarcasm and cynicism-which he previously focused on England's political and cultural decline-on the incredible damage being done to the earth's environment. Referring to the temperature of absolute zero on the Celsius scale, Reading's title has many implications: the sense of apocalypse pervading the book, the starting point of life on earth, as well as the amount of effort Reading feels we are making to save our planet. Part poetic sequence, part collage, the book is composed of vitriolic untitled prose and verse poems ("...didya read how them rain forest is burnin 6,000 acres an hour"), fragments of found text ("The Big Bang seems to have been...14 billion years ago"), photocopies from magazines and newspapers, and even an homage to Christopher Smart ("For I will consider my cat Tikka/ For she is an atheist"), which alternately borrow the language of journalism, seafaring, science and anger. Interwoven are recurring bits of dialogue with "Noye," a version of the Biblical Noah, who at first heartily welcomes offers of endangered animals in need of rescue, such as "circa one million/ Mexican Free-tailed bats," but who finally will take no more: "'Piss off:/ We got more than enough." These elements add up to an intimidating critique of humanity's negligence.
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Review

"His remarkable range of styles and his unrelenting vision of an England in decay."

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd
• ISBN 10: 185224724X
• ISBN 13: 9781852247249
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English