Publisher Description

Living Weapon is a love song to the imagination, a new blade of light homing in on our political moment. A winged man plummets from the troposphere, four police officers enter a phone store, concrete pavements hang overhead. Phillips ruminates on violins and violence, on hatred and pleasure, on turning forty-three, even on the end of existence itself. His poetry reveals the limitations of our vocabulary, showing that our platitudes are inadequate to the brutal times we find ourselves in. And yet, through interrogation of allegory and symbol, names and things, time and musicality, a language of grace and urgency is found. For still our lives go on, and these are poems of survival as much as indictment. Living Weapon is a piercing, flaring collection from 'a virtuoso poetic voice' (Granta).

Review

'Throughout the collection, Rowan Ricardo Phillips refuses to abandon the past; instead, he interrogates its ghosts - in all their terrible admixture of violence and beauty - and, despite every reason not to, he sings.' - Will Brewbaker, Los Angeles Review of Books

'Phillips brilliantly uses poetry to probe contemporary life and all its tensions, and provide a clear-sighted respite from those tensions. Written by a master of form and tone, Living Weapon is essential reading.' - Nick Laird

Promotional

The award-winning essayist and poet Rowan Ricardo Phillips presents a bracing renewal of civic poetry - his first publication in the UK.

Long Description

Living Weapon is a love song to the imagination, a new blade of light homing in on our political moment. A winged man plummets from the troposphere, four police officers enter a phone store, concrete pavements hang overhead. Phillips ruminates on violins and violence, on hatred and pleasure, on turning forty-three, even on the end of existence itself. His poetry reveals the limitations of our vocabulary, showing that our platitudes are inadequate to the brutal times we find ourselves in. And yet, through interrogation of allegory and symbol, names and things, time and musicality, a language of grace and urgency is found. For still our lives go on, and these are poems of survival as much as indictment. Living Weapon is a piercing, flaring collection from 'a virtuoso poetic voice' ( Granta ).

Review Text

'Throughout the collection, Rowan Ricardo Phillips refuses to abandon the past; instead, he interrogates its ghosts - in all their terrible admixture of violence and beauty - and, despite every reason not to, he sings.' - Will Brewbaker, Los Angeles Review of Books 'Phillips brilliantly uses poetry to probe contemporary life and all its tensions, and provide a clear-sighted respite from those tensions. Written by a master of form and tone, Living Weapon is essential reading.' - Nick Laird

Promotional "Headline"

The award-winning essayist and poet Rowan Ricardo Phillips presents a bracing renewal of civic poetry - his first publication in the UK.

Details