Watching the Fire Eater - Softcover

Robert Minhinnick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1854110756 ISBN 13: 9781854110756

Publisher: Seren, 1995

Synopsis

Former Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year

From Copacabana to urban Yorkshire, from New Mexico to a Welsh funfair, from The Netherlands to the Clare coast, Robert Minhinnick's world is a shrinking one.

Its cast of characters includes Rio beach beggars, Madison Avenue literati, saloon-bar poolsters and millionaire scrap merchants. These essays cover a variety of subjects: third world poverty and the internationalism of alcohol, rugby through the eyes of a vegetarian, nuclear power, sunbathing and a thanksgiving dinner for the demise of Margaret Thatcher.

But at the core of this collection is a vivid series of attempts to strip away the exhausted mythologies of the writer's own country and the increasingly-packaged places he visits. Whether in the rainforest or the big match crowd, Minhinnick's language, acid, imagist, compassionate, celebrates the people he meets and, fleetingly, defines their lives.

About this title

About the Author

Robert Minhinnick is one of Wales’ (some would say Britain’s) most eminent writers. He is a multi-prizewinning poet, essayist and novelist; his most recent poetry collection was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize in 2017 and won Wales Book of the Year, which he has won three times. Two of his novels have been shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize. He edited Poetry Wales for ten years. Minhinnick is also an environmentalist and founder of Friends of the Earth Cymru and Sustainable Wales who has written extensively on the environment. He edited Gorwelion: Shared Horizons (2021) a book of essays about climate change.

Edition details

• Publisher: Seren
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1854110756
• ISBN 13: 9781854110756
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128