Description
Our Stickleback series is a place that a poet can make a point within the confines of a micro pamphlet. Initially, available as a Limited Edition Print Run, these beautiful little collections are permanently available to all in PDF eBook form.
Stickleback X:
Spotlight on Jeremy Reed
by
Jeremy Reed
Jeremy Reed, born on a chip of rock off the French Normandy coast has been for decades Britain’s most dynamic, adventurous, controversial and futures poet. Called by the Independent ‘British poetry’s glam, spangly, shape-shifting answer to David Bowie’, his poetry, fiction and performances of his work are singularly inimitable in their opposition to grey mainstream poetry. He has published over 40 books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, winning prestigious literary prizes like the Somerset Maugham Award, and was on his coming to live in London in the 1980s patronised by the artist Francis Bacon. His biggest fans are J.G. Ballard, Pete Doherty and Bjork who has called his work ‘the most beautiful, outrageously brilliant poetry in the world.’ Jeremy writes about every subject that British poetry considers taboo, glamour, pop, rock, sci-fi, cyber, mutant, gay, drugs, neuroscientific, the disaffected and outlawed, and the fizzy big city chemistry of the London in which he lives and creates. His performances solo, or with The Ginger Light are unrivalled in intensity. In recent years he has published the first book-length poem on Elvis Presley, Heartbreak Hotel (Orion), Saint Billie (Enitharmon) a book-length poem on Billie Holiday, Orange Sunshine an epic poem on 1960s pop culture, Duck and Sally Inside and This is How You Disappear (both Enitharmon) a book of elegies for dead and missing friends, a biography of Anna Kavan Stranger On Earth, a novel The Grid (Peter Owen) and his book of poetry Piccadilly Bongo contained a 4 track CD from the singer Marc Almond. Amongst his many forthcoming publications are John Stephen King of Carnaby Street and the 1960s look and a book of sci-fi poems Honey I Need with an introduction by J.G. Ballard.
www.jeremyreed.co.uk
robinmcnamara17 –
Anyone who quotes Arthur Rimbaud & David Bowie in the same sentence as their literary influences is always going to be different from the norm of mainstream poetry. A prolific poet with over 70 books published over a 50 year period. In this Stickleback collection by Jeremy Reed my senses are assaulted with poetry that has you hiding from yourself as you try to decipher the meaning of poems littered with numerous words that I had to look up.
The poems here are quite abstract and vague in meaning dressed up with impressive vocabulary that leaves me the reader on the outside looking in. Perhaps it’s just a personal preference that I’m more drawn to poetry that gives me engagement and stirs emotions & outrage. I’m not finding it here. A collection that leaves me the reader feeling that a air of pretentious lingers in these poems, I probably shall be beheaded in the Tower of London for saying this about a poet who has admirers like Icelandic singer Bork, who called his poetry ‘the most beautiful, outrageously brilliant poetry in the world’ I can only go by the poems I’ve read in the Stickleback so my bad.
Georgina Titmus –
Well, I think this Stickleback by Jeremy Reed is fab! The language pops with mind-blowing images; navigating inner (and outer) worlds I can more than relate to… I only hope I can post this review, as the first time I tried, I failed.