Xenia, etc. - Caleshu, Anthony

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Résumé :
Anthony Caleshu is the author of five books of poetry, including A Dynamic Exchange Between Us and The Victor Poems (both from Shearsman Books). His poetry has appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, including Boston Review (as winner of the Boston Review Poetry Prize), Granta, TLS, New Irish Poetry, and Best British Poetry. Born and raised in the USA, he has lived for the past 25 years in Ireland and England, and is Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing at University of Plymouth in Devon....

Biographie:
Anthony Caleshu is the author of four books of poems, as well as various fictions and critical writings about contemporary poetry. His poems have appeared widely in journals on both sides of the Atlantic, including The Times Literary Supplement, Granta, Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland Review, and in Boston Review as winner of the Boston Review Poetry Prize. He is Professor of Poetry at University of Plymouth, and editor of the small press, Periplum....

Sommaire:
In his new book of poems, Anthony Caleshu writes after the visual art of Julie Curtiss, Jad? Fadojutimi, Shara Hughes, Shio Kusaka, Henry Taylor, Emma Webster, and Jonas Wood (also included, a musical interlude after the music of Pixies). Poems move in and out of interiors, portraits, landscapes, abstractions, and the concept of xenia - Greek for 'hospitality', later adopted by the Romans as a category of 'still-life' painting featuring welcoming platters of fruit and the like. If ekphrastic in tradition, the poems privilege lyric and narrative in(ter)vention, springboarding from the visual arts into new spaces of speculation, transformation, and wonder. 'Anthony Caleshu has come up with a huge holiday of a book. Not only ambitious and thought-provoking but also (a rare combination) fun. From the tricksy introductory 'Epigraphs' to the 'Endnotes', he keeps us on our toes (if your brains are your toes?), the references and jokes flying every which (witch) way. We begin in the company of basketballs and cheese-plants, rollerchairs, and dinosaurs - and other things not often met with in poetry, in my experience, and go from there. To give you some idea of the mood: Caleshu quotes Epicurus's description of friendship as 'the most important means by which wisdom acquires happiness' - you could say the same about Xenia etc., as a means by which wisdom acquires happiness. What's not to like?' -Selima Hill...