Birmingham River by Roy Fisher
Birmingham River is Roy Fisher's first book of poems since Poems 1955-1987 , published by OUP in 1988. Including a sequence of `Six Texts for a Film', which provided the basis for an Arts Council film made by Tom Pickard, the collection contains much varied work, and a warmer, more relaxed tone than previous collections. Beginning with the premise that `Birmingham's what I think with', the central group of poems describe `a slow petty river' - two, in fact, as they merged and sank out of sight beneath industrialized Birmingham. A contrasting group of poems commissioned for Ronald King's artist's book with puppets, Anansi Company , give continued evidence of Fisher's anarchic pleasure in identifying the absurd, the self-important, and the politically hypocritical - themes that recur throughout this original collection. This book is intended for readers of contemporary poetry.
Roy Fisher (1930-2017) published over 30 poetry books, and was the subject of numerous critical essays and several studies, including The Thing About Roy Fisher: Critical Essays on the Poetry of Roy Fisher, edited by Peter Robinson and John Kerrigan (Liverpool University Press, 2000), and of The Unofficial Roy Fisher, edited by Peter Robinson (Shearsman Books, 2010). He published four books with Bloodaxe. The Dow Low Drop: New & Selected Poems (1996) was superseded by his later retrospective, The Long and the Short of It: Poems 1955-2005 (2005), and followed by Standard Midland (2010), published on his 80th birthday, which was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award. An expanded edition, The Long and the Short of It: Poems 1955-2010 - including Standard Midland - was published in 2012. His first US Selected Poems, edited by August Kleinzahler, was published by Flood Editions in 2011. His final collection, Slakki: New & Neglected Poems (2016) is a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. Peter Robinson's edition, The Citizen and the Making of 'City' (Bloodaxe Books, 2022) includes Fisher's early, previously unpublished prose work 'The Citizen', the precursor of 'City', with all three versions of that later sequence. Born in Handsworth, Birmingham, he retired as Senior Lecturer in American Studies from Keele University in 1982. He was also a jazz musician, and lived in the Derbyshire Peak District in his later years.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780192823427 |
| ISBN 10 | 0192823426 |
| Title | Birmingham River |
| Author | Roy Fisher |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Year published | 1994-06-01 |
| Number of pages | 62 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |