Smoke Rising: London 1940-41 - Softcover

Seed, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1848614322 ISBN 13: 9781848614321

Publisher: Shearsman Books, 2015

Synopsis

"Despite exalted notions of the author, writers work with the materials they find around them and try to hammer out some kind of new thing with bits of discursive wood lying around and rusty nails and old string and glue. What I am doing here might even be compared to a film-maker creating a documentary out of other people's bits of film and sound recordings, interspersed with some slight commentary. Editing as creative act!" From John Seed's 'Postface' to 'Brandon Pithouse' Smoke Rising is a documentary poem. Very much in the tradition of Charles Reznikoff's 'Testimony', it utilises oral sources to capture the speech - and perhaps the experience-of those who suffered the London Blitz. However, its elective affinities are also to Walter Benjamin's great unfinished 'Arcades Project': "to carry the principle of montage into history... to assemble large-scale constructions out of the smallest and most precisely cut components... to discover in the analysis of the small individual moment the crystal of the total event."

About this title

About the Author

John Seed has lived and worked in London since 1983. First published in the 1970s, his work has appeared in various anthologiesand magazines in Britain and the United States. He is the author of ten collections of verse, including New and Collected Poemspublished by Shearsman in 2005. Recent collections include Manchester: August 16th & 17th 1819 (Intercapillary Editions, London2013) and Some Poems, 2006-12 (Gratton Street Irregulars, Cheltenham, 2014 - distributed by Shearsman Books). BrandonPithouse: Recollections of the Durham Coalfield is forthcoming from Smokestack Books in 2016.

Edition details

• Publisher: Shearsman Books
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1848614322
• ISBN 13: 9781848614321
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 86