The Book of Revelation serves as a lonely planet guide to this outrageous place in time. With a nod to Mark E. Smith - late lead singer of The Fall and "the John of Patmos of his day" - Rob A. Mackenzie's apocalyptic nightmare vision encompasses the rags of Empire, political turpitude and blindingly oppressive headlines in a grimly comic phantasmagoria of twenty-first century turmoil. It is not all darkness, however: there are consolations to be found in the creative underground, the varieties of artistic resistance, and guinea pigs. With typical formal variety and stylistic energy, Mackenzie takes us on a tour through the kingdoms of mosquito governments and "hyena influencers, hyena Messiahs", recognising both despair at passing moments and also that "the moments are always beginning".

About the Author
Rob A. Mackenzie was born in Glasgow and lives in Edinburgh. His previous work includes The Good News (Salt 2013) and The Opposite of Cabbage (Salt 2009) and two pamphlets: Fleck and the Bank (Salt 2012), which dramatized a bank employee's life during the financial crisis, and The Clown of Natural Sorrow, (HappenStance Press 2005). He is reviews editor at Magma Poetry and his poems, reviews and articles have been published in Poetry Review, Poetry London, The Dark Horse, The North, Shearsman Magazine and many other publications. Phil Clement wrote in the New Welsh Review of The Good News: "It feels as though the poems are charged, booby-trapped... The joy in reading this collection is found in riddling your own perspectives on fate, faith, travel and death."

Reviews

This is a dense, allusive, layered collection and I feel I shall need several more readings to really get under its skin. That will be no hardship, and anyway I always feel it is a virtue in a book not to give up all its meaning at once.

-- Sheenagh Pugh

Biting, satirical, polemical and eschatological, this collection is Mackenzie's attempt to navigate the outrageous labyrinth of the 2010s. Many of the poems talk shop about the poetry world and cock a snook at its self-serving and navel-gazing irrelevance.

-- Richie McCaffery * Northwords *



Book Information
ISBN 9781784632151
Author Rob A. Mackenzie
Format Paperback
Page Count 112
Imprint Salt Publishing
Publisher Salt Publishing
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 8mm