 |  |  |  |  |
| Templar Poetry |
Before Playing Romeo
Jane Weir
Jane Weir
In Jane Weir's enchanted second collection we find ourselves and others on
teetering balconies, in deliciously decaying villas, on sun-gorged Italian
terraces. Passionate, disturbed, eroticised these poems invite us down myriad
streets, usher us through doors, lead us into rooms, into gardens, cellars and
glasshouses. The major preoccupation is the ever-fluctuating self, awash with
its inconstancy and insatiable desire for reinvention. In part an outcast,
reminiscent of Melmouth, the voices fluctuate between confidante,
interrogator and pussy cat. Ever watchful and intent, part Hogarth, part
Caravaggio, part Orlando these poems are both exquisite in detail, and precise
in their poetic intent, with uniquely shaped references stretching from the
modernist textiles of Fortuny and Edith Marx to the pure sensual pleasures of
making gnocchi and Limoncello. Flirting with gesture, mime and mask this
collection evokes the persona in the signature poem 'You': all 'lips ticked,
cheeks hearted'.
Jane Weir is quite simply the most exciting new poet I
have read since Alice Oswald
- Carol Ann Duffy
These are poems to go back to time and time again. From ferrets to flirting,
by way of figs, from Belfast to Venice with a detour through Wigan, Jane
Weir's voice is as true as her eye is unerring. Phone me please, Kirsty Young,
I've found my Desert Island Book.
- Glenn Patterson
teetering balconies, in deliciously decaying villas, on sun-gorged Italian
terraces. Passionate, disturbed, eroticised these poems invite us down myriad
streets, usher us through doors, lead us into rooms, into gardens, cellars and
glasshouses. The major preoccupation is the ever-fluctuating self, awash with
its inconstancy and insatiable desire for reinvention. In part an outcast,
reminiscent of Melmouth, the voices fluctuate between confidante,
interrogator and pussy cat. Ever watchful and intent, part Hogarth, part
Caravaggio, part Orlando these poems are both exquisite in detail, and precise
in their poetic intent, with uniquely shaped references stretching from the
modernist textiles of Fortuny and Edith Marx to the pure sensual pleasures of
making gnocchi and Limoncello. Flirting with gesture, mime and mask this
collection evokes the persona in the signature poem 'You': all 'lips ticked,
cheeks hearted'.
Jane Weir is quite simply the most exciting new poet I
have read since Alice Oswald
- Carol Ann Duffy
These are poems to go back to time and time again. From ferrets to flirting,
by way of figs, from Belfast to Venice with a detour through Wigan, Jane
Weir's voice is as true as her eye is unerring. Phone me please, Kirsty Young,
I've found my Desert Island Book.
- Glenn Patterson
HB £9.99
ISBN-13 978-0-9550023-8-0
PUBLICATION OCTOBER 2007 - available for preorder