Full Description
This lively second collection from a young, much-travelled writer, falls into two parts. 'Transit' includes poems of abroad, especially Japan, where Tobias Hill lived for two years. 'Back to the City' is about London, from hangover to Underground; Hiroshima; and the `City of Clocks', a fusion of cities and ages. They are poems crammed with a young man's curiosity and eye for detail, and show his great ability for story-telling. Tobias Hill lives in London, and besides writing (his short stories and novels are published by Faber) he reviews and edits several new magazines.
"Hill's special territory, in poetry and prose, is the 'urban-pastoral' ... his native North London is transformed, with many deftly dark touches, into an uneasy realm of the imagination. Hill clearly appreciated Simon Armitage's storytelling persona; he also drew upon observation of the natural world in ways associated with Ted Hughes. Much of his imagery is by turns delicately 'Japanese', or reminiscent of the heyday of Craig Raine's 'Martian' style. Hill has a romantic dimension in his work that is all his own. As a young man with an intense curiosity about the world, his work is full of sensual images, vignettes of city life - and romance ... these are poems of flirtation and desire."
- contemporarywriters.co.uk
"The closeup detail taken directly from nature, then skewed through 90o to give the reader something completely new, even unique ... with this third collection, Hill promises to be a real force in poetry, displaying an utterly contemporary understanding of how nature continues to work."
- Poetry Review
"There is a fin de siècle decadence about them ... not least in their brightly coloured diction, their luxuriant descriptiveness, their louche postures."
- Poetry Wales
"Superb conjurations of place."
- Adam Mars Jones
"Compassionate and intelligent ... so full of action and interest and that brings alive such an array of people and places, that it is difficult to believe they sprang from the pen of one writer."
- Rachel Cusk
Contents
I Transit
The City of Clocks
Transit
Prisons in a Departure Lounge at Midnight
One Day in Hiroshima
from A Year In Japan
May
August
October
Homesickness
Playing Japanese Chess with the Elder Mrs Uchida
Sumo Wrestler in Sushi Bar
Earthquake, Osaka
Green Tea Cooling
The Barber's Daughter
Waiting
The Secret of Burning Diamonds
Rio in Carnival
Jael
Three Wishes in a Small Town
The Mule and the Rain
How to Light Dynamite
Flora and the Admiral
II Back To The City
London Pastoral
New Verses for Clock City Magpies
North-West London
Love Song
Broken Bone
Playground at 2 am
Sheep's Clothing
Xenophobia
The Woman who talks to Ezra Pound in Tesco
Life Savings
Today the House is Full of Dishcloths
Reasons Why
Meat
July 14th, 10 pm
The Beekeepers
Midnight in the City of Clocks
