Poems Without Irony

Alex Wong

£9.99

We send all orders via Royal Mail: within the UK, choose from 1st Class, 2nd Class or Special Delivery; for the rest of the world, International Standard or International Tracked. Delivery and packaging charges are calculated automatically at the checkout.

To collect orders in person from the Bookshop, choose Click and Collect at the checkout.


Carcanet Press Ltd
31 January 2017
ISBN: 9781784103040
Paperback
136 pages

From the publisher

Shortlisted for The Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry First Collection Prize 2017. Shortlisted for The Roehampton Poetry Prize 2017. Poems without Irony is Alex Wong's first collection. In subject, tone and form it ranges widely. The book as a whole does not address any one paticular theme, but much of it is concerned with the experience of particularity, with the bounds of moral calculation, and with the need for precision - of thought and of speech - as an aim or obligation. Tensions between the 'natural' and the artificial, intention and expression, good faith and bad, are recurrently felt as the poems negotiate their various kinds of ambivalence. The style is governed by a desire for simplicity almost equal to the lure of extravagance, and by the tendency of its subtly differentiated voices towards an elusive playfulness in the face of serious matters. The poems are designed to be read aloud, or at least 'using the mouth'. Wong's patient and sympathetic listening to the sounds of English poetry in all periods has enriched the patterns of his own. The poems, therefore, enfold many memories of earlier styles - revived, or still vital, but also gaining new tonal energy in a functional strangeness.