Tom Raworth's Collected Poems (2003) was acclaimed by the Times Literary
Supplement as a milestone: thirty years' work by a major poet of English
modernism gathered for the first time. Raworth moves on, radical,
inventive and politically engaged. Windmills in Flames takes a
vertiginous ride through the language landscape we inhabit. Poems
fragment and distort, veer in unexpected directions, reconfigure.
Playful, often funny, Windmills in Flames is fuelled by anger at the use
of language as an instrument of political deceit and military
aggression.
Raworth often writes - and at public readings always performs - in lower
case. The delivery is so swift you don't notice the tremble in the air
until later, the grenade goes off. Statements coming at you, one after
another, without qualification or hierarchy...No flim-flam...He's all
detail, all darting quickness. - Iain Sinclair, London Review of Books
The poems have no purpose, though their author is happy should others
find them interesting to read. This book collects some early works
missing from the Collected Poems (2003). The rest were written since
then. They will help the reader lose weight, have an attractive smile,
be at ease with members of the opposite (or their own) sex, have relief
from constipation, speak in tongues, fillet herrings and ultimately
boost the Nation's economy. Tom Raworth
Cover illustration Copyright (c)Tom Raworth. Cover design
StephenRaw.com
