Gain of Function - Peter Hague

. .

Résumé :
.

Biographie:
Peter Hague has written most of his life and always returned to it, like it was some sort of duty - a way of explaining the world - or testing it. His various books of poetry, including 'Summer With The Gods', 'Louder Prayers', 'The Momentary Clock' and 'The Laments of the Soul' all display a landmark development of his talent - one defined in a period of re-invention which began to take place around 2016. Also available are 'Gain of Function', which is a collection produced during the febrile atmosphere of the pandemic, and 'Hope in the Heart of Hatred': a 'bridge' between his earlier work and the work he is doing now, such as 'No Road Home'. A number of other books are in production, encompassing both his exciting current work and a revival of his early output, stretching back to the nineteen-seventies. He has finally decided to concentrate his remaining years in becoming a lasting voice in the pageant of poetry....

Sommaire:
This book is a great deal more than the sum of one hundred and two poems. It represents a shift in creative potential which is exactly described by its title: 'Gain of Function', which you may well recognise as a phrase relating to science. However, within the sphere of this book, Gain of Function mostly represents a collision between past and future in which my long-developed ways of working have been hit by enormous positive change and new possibilities - all driven by the advent of social media and the seismic changes in the world of publishing. The very recent work presented in this book is unique amongst my output, because for the first time I was faced with the possibility that whichever poem I was working on, it could be immediately presented to the public, and indeed to the world via social media. This new reality created a completely different working atmosphere. The sudden, tense focus of instantaneous publishing added a whole new factor of concentration, necessary confidence and embedded topicality - specifically the poems dealing with the recent virus and some aspects of politics and the media. ...