Desolate Market by Julian Turner
Julian Turner's Desolate Market takes as its tuning fork a line from William Blake's Vela, or the 4 Zoas: `Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy.' Fascinated by the interaction of material and mystical forces, Turner sets up a series of test cases in which the power of the human imagination, and its susceptibility to quasi-mystical influence, are explored. Poems on influencing machines (mind-controlling contraptions housed in the brain, as described by some people experiencing psychosis) double as a critique of the totalitarian dreams of despots. The corrosive influence of the market economy (that other quasi-mystical force), with its power to bring about poverty, redundancy, terrorism, and alienation, is the subject of a later section of poems. The collection ends with the poet's alternative vision of the birth of the cosmos, a `disinterested machine / spinning its great designs of flesh and soul.' Turner's `affecting, memorable and original' poems (TLS) were shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection with Crossing the Outskirts, and his Planet-Struck was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Desolate Market is his most ambitious and urgent work to date.
Julian Turner has published three previous collections of poetry: Crossing the Outskirts, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize best first collection in 2002, Orphan Sites (2006) and Planet-Struck (2011). Born in Cheadle Hulme, near Manchester, in 1955, he was educated at New College, Oxford and Goldsmiths, London. From 2013-15 he was Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Leeds University. He lives with his partner in Otley, West Yorkshire, and works as a writer and counsellor.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781784105129 |
| ISBN 10 | 1784105120 |
| Title | Desolate Market |
| Author | Julian Turner |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Carcanet Press Ltd |
| Year published | 2018-07-26 |
| Number of pages | 72 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |