The Alexandra Sequence by John Redmond
In The Alexandra Sequence John Redmond views contemporary urban life through the suggestive prism of the 'mummers play', a seasonal British folk-theatre staged in the streets and door-to-door. The book's title takes its name from an area of Liverpool, a city shaped by its recent history of trade and migration, still recovering after a long period of decline. Experiences of urban uprootedness and social precarity shape suburban livelihoods that are 'livid with accident'. Drawing on the two central themes of the mummers play - combat and resurrection - the poems reveal both dark and light parallels between the modern neighbourhood and medieval theatre: the carnivalesque zombie-drummers marching through a local park find their mirror-image in the daily disguises of life in a housing estate, or in the masked infractions of the 2011 England Riots. Mixing narrative and lyric, Redmond paints a neighbourhood of lively, unlikely references, from Juvenal to Tommy Cooper, Brueghel to indie rock.
'Ingenious, maverick, brilliantly protean - welcome to the quicksilver world of John Redmond's new collection' David Morley
John Redmond was born in Dublin in 1967. After completing a D. Phil on the subject of contemporary poetry at Oxford, he taught for two years at Macalester College in Minnesota. Currently he is a Reader in Creative Writing at the University of Liverpool. He reviews poetry widely and was associated with the poetry magazine, Thumbscrew. He has published a textbook How to Write a Poem (Oxford: Blackwell) and was the editor of James Liddy: Selected Poems (Dublin: Arlen House). His critical book Poetry and Privacy: Questioning Public Interpretations of Contemporary British and Irish Poetry has just been published by Seren.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781784102043 |
| ISBN 10 | 1784102040 |
| Title | The Alexandra Sequence |
| Author | John Redmond |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Carcanet Press Ltd |
| Year published | 2016-09-29 |
| Number of pages | 50 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |