Description
Shortlisted for the 2017 Ledbury Forte Poetry Prize For Second Collections. Sometime during the twentieth century, the self-mythology of the literary critic fused with that of the cowboy: lone outriders practising a defunct trade. In Holy Toldedo! John Clegg tracks the critic's silhouette over the dangerous, sun-drenched landscapes of New Mexico, California, Nashville, Utah, Oxford, Cambridge, and London. Here is Donald Davie listening to gospel radio in a Nashville taxi, and here is F. R. Leavis standing on a chair, 'unscrewing instead the world from round the lightbulb'. Vistas of bristlecone and citrus groves, pocked with fruit flies and rain birds, fuse with the glib-core of Oxbridge England, the university science labs where 'all three entrances felt like the back way'. Holy Toledo! is a history of English literary criticism in the twentieth century, a bestiary of the American Southwest, an unreliable guide to the desert. Generous, humorous, happily askew, Clegg's first Carcanet collection signals the flourishing of an 'emerging' poet as a major voice.
John Clegg is a bookseller at the LRB Bookshop, LondonA wry history of twentieth-century literary criticism
About the Author
John Clegg was born in Chester in 1986 and grew up in Cambridge. He studied for a PhD at Durham University. In 2013, he received an Eric Gregory Award. A pamphlet, Captain Love and the Five Joaquins, is published by Emma Press. He works as a bookseller in London.
Reviews
'No poet writing today matches John Clegg for wit and rigour. Holy Toledo! opens up a brilliant, uncanny frontier between the American West and the England of Empson, Davie and Woolf. Questioning language, rejoicing in it, Clegg's poetry plunges headfirst into the Great Tradition and comes out swinging.' Dai George;'Shaking off the dust of Cambridge, John Clegg spoors Bloomsbury, and then - Holy Toledo! - enters some western from another planet. Whatever horse he rides he makes it go, a lasso his modus operandi for capturing images.' Marius Kociejowski; 'I must have been waiting for a poet to fuse deep sincerity and irony, craft and process, the surreal and the historical, because I read this twice in one sitting, fizzing with jealousy. Clegg's poetry is a must.' Luke Kennard
Awards
Short-listed for Ledbury Forte Poetry Prize For Second Collections 2017.
Book Information
ISBN 9781784102609
Author John Clegg
Format Paperback
Page Count 64
Imprint Carcanet Press Ltd
Publisher Carcanet Press Ltd
Weight(grams) 113g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 138mm * 8mm
John Clegg is a bookseller at the LRB Bookshop, LondonA wry history of twentieth-century literary criticism
About the Author
John Clegg was born in Chester in 1986 and grew up in Cambridge. He studied for a PhD at Durham University. In 2013, he received an Eric Gregory Award. A pamphlet, Captain Love and the Five Joaquins, is published by Emma Press. He works as a bookseller in London.
Reviews
'No poet writing today matches John Clegg for wit and rigour. Holy Toledo! opens up a brilliant, uncanny frontier between the American West and the England of Empson, Davie and Woolf. Questioning language, rejoicing in it, Clegg's poetry plunges headfirst into the Great Tradition and comes out swinging.' Dai George;'Shaking off the dust of Cambridge, John Clegg spoors Bloomsbury, and then - Holy Toledo! - enters some western from another planet. Whatever horse he rides he makes it go, a lasso his modus operandi for capturing images.' Marius Kociejowski; 'I must have been waiting for a poet to fuse deep sincerity and irony, craft and process, the surreal and the historical, because I read this twice in one sitting, fizzing with jealousy. Clegg's poetry is a must.' Luke Kennard
Awards
Short-listed for Ledbury Forte Poetry Prize For Second Collections 2017.
Book Information
ISBN 9781784102609
Author John Clegg
Format Paperback
Page Count 64
Imprint Carcanet Press Ltd
Publisher Carcanet Press Ltd
Weight(grams) 113g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 138mm * 8mm
