There Will Be Singing
Aidan Semmens’s fifth collection of poems moves from the range of the world to the deeply personal, always placing the detail in historical context. Employing a variety of poetic techniques, he moves from the moral ambiguities of empire to the run-in to Brexit; from a reworking, forty years on, of the poem for which he was awarded the Cambridge University Chancellor’s Medal, to the breakdown of language suffered by his mother after an ultimately fatal stroke.
“There’s an exuberance of the poet in full stride. Typically, the phrasing and imagery are seductive and of the physical world being lived. Learning is carried lightly, erudition not pushed at the reader but drawn into the lyricism.” — Kelvin Corcoran
In the dark times
Will there still be singing?
There will still be singing.
Of the dark times. — Bertolt Brecht
There Will Be Singing is available now from Shearsman Books
“There’s an exuberance of the poet in full stride. Typically, the phrasing and imagery are seductive and of the physical world being lived. Learning is carried lightly, erudition not pushed at the reader but drawn into the lyricism.” — Kelvin Corcoran
In the dark times
Will there still be singing?
There will still be singing.
Of the dark times. — Bertolt Brecht
There Will Be Singing is available now from Shearsman Books
Life Has Become More Cheerful
‘Aidan Semmens is a poet who has always been fearless in confronting the plight of the world with its disturbed ways and this volume is no exception. The mordany title Life Has Become More Cheerful is a chilling quote by Stalin after the horrors of the Great Purge in 1938 and sets the tone for what is to come. The first poem announces 1917, the start of the Russian Revolution and from there follows its aftermath. Employing first-hand accounts and factual information, we are taken on a selected tour of 20th century Russia, with a few interconnected diversions on the way.
‘The subject is undoubtedly weighty but there is a restrained lyrical quality to the poetry which prevents it from being oppressive and as with the best of sombre narratives there are moments of humour: ‘Heracles found no flavour in the classics / preferring Adventures in Cookery’.
‘Never was a collection more pertinent to our own uncertain times or, as Semmens put it in one of the poems,
‘we infer the future from data about the past / like a dream of meaning / a badly crafted lie’. An essential read.’
– Geraldine Monk
'The good news is that Semmens is writing very well these days'
– Peter Riley in The Fortnightly Review
Life Has Become More Cheerful is available from Shearsman Books
‘The subject is undoubtedly weighty but there is a restrained lyrical quality to the poetry which prevents it from being oppressive and as with the best of sombre narratives there are moments of humour: ‘Heracles found no flavour in the classics / preferring Adventures in Cookery’.
‘Never was a collection more pertinent to our own uncertain times or, as Semmens put it in one of the poems,
‘we infer the future from data about the past / like a dream of meaning / a badly crafted lie’. An essential read.’
– Geraldine Monk
'The good news is that Semmens is writing very well these days'
– Peter Riley in The Fortnightly Review
Life Has Become More Cheerful is available from Shearsman Books
Uncertain Measures
Starting in A Ritual Landscape that ties the industrial heritage of Britain with medieval and prehistoric rituals, Aidan Semmens’s Uncertain Measures teases out the moral and practical values of our post-industrial, post-Holocaust, post-nuclear age. Simon Smith says: ‘What runs through this book, like Brighton rock, is a traditional, yet questioning, and taut lyricism, a poetry of argument in the voice of smouldering outrage. The voice of these poems inhabits the place of post-industrial landscape in a way not as effectively revisited and examined since the poetry of Roy Fisher.’
Read an in-depth review by Rodney Pybus on the poetry website Litter here.
Purchase Uncertain Measures direct from Shearsman Books here.
Read an in-depth review by Rodney Pybus on the poetry website Litter here.
Purchase Uncertain Measures direct from Shearsman Books here.
The Book of Isaac
The Book of Isaac is a sequence of 56 “distressed,” or damaged, sonnets in which Aidan Semmens endeavours to distil something of the Russian-Jewish experience from the history of his own family, in particular that of his great-grandfather, the economist, lawyer, journalist and socialist Isaac Hourwich. Drawing material from the apocryphal Book of Esdras, from FBI files and other historical sources as well as from Hourwich’s private and public writings, heproduces a fractured narrative running from the pogroms of the late19th century through the beginnings of the American diaspora, to the Revolution and beyond.
'The Book of Isaac is surely one of the most fascinating books of poetry to be published this year' — Peter Riley, The Fortnightly Review Buy The Book of Isaac direct from Parlor Press here. |
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A Stone Dog
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'Like the landscapes depicted here in sharp, staccato syntax, these poems are shifting contours. They are formed by a mobile quick-wittedness fit for purpose—the exploration of the gap between appearance and reality. We sense that this poet has seen things for himself — and they are not quite as reported elsewhere. The clarity of the literal vision predominates. Semmens doesn't blink in the face of the big scam, but in the sharply realised terms of these poems out-stares the merging deceptions surrounding us.'
— Kelvin Corcoran Buy A Stone Dog direct from Shearsman Books here. |
By the North Sea: an anthology of Suffolk poetry
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With a foreword by Ronald Blythe, a collection of poems that will surprise the reader — Suffolk natives, incomers and visitors are all represented. From older times come Algernon Charles Swinburne, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Ann Candler, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, George Crabbe, Robert Bloomfield and Bernard Barton. From modern times we have — Andy Brown, Angela Leighton, Tamar Yoseloff, Ronald Blythe, Victor Tapner, Pauline Stainer, John Matthias, Wendy Mulford, Claire Crowther, RF Langley, Andrew Brewerton, Rodney Pybus, Charlotte Geater, Zoe Skoulding, Deryn Rees-Jones, Aidan Semmens, Michael Laskey, Herbert Lomas, Anne Beresford, Will Stone, Richard Caddel and Michael Hamburger.
Purchase By the North Sea from Shearsman Books here. |
