Beneath

Simon Perril's new collection is the twin to his Archilochus on the Moon, and continues his exploration of the tangled roots of ancient Greek lyric. A nekyia is an underworld story preserving a rite from classical antiquity wherein the living call up the dead, and are questioned about the future. Neobulé was the bride-to-be of the first lyric poet, Archilochus-until her father inexplicably called it off and incurred the most infamous poetic wrath in literary history. The soldier-poet's scurrilous response shamed the entire family into committing suicide. "Beneath" tracks Neobulé's arrival in Hades; and voices her gradual understanding of shadehood. She may be "a chorus of gasps / no lyre can pluck", but can still recall being "more shade above / in the mud-brick groves / of kitchens".

Simon Perril was born in 1968 and lives in Oakham, Rutland. His poetry collections include Nitrate (Salt) and A Clutch of Odes (Oystercatcher Press). He has written widely on contemporary poetry and poetics, and edited The Salt Companion to John James (Salt). He teaches at De Montfort University, Leicester, and loves silent movies, and noisy music. And cats.