Second Best Moments In Chinese History

Kuppner Frank

The 501 quatrains of "Second Best Moments in Chinese History" make it seem at first like a repackaged version of Frank Kuppner's celebrated first collection "A Bad Day for the Sung Dynasty" (1984). But it isn't: "Please note that this is a completely different work, although it is formally identical and very similar in its preoccupations". Its tone is different – something to do with maturity and cadencing, which make the laughter and heartbreak more intense, more political. "Basically", he confides, "it is an attempt to get it completely right this time".

About the Author

Frank Kuppner was born in Glasgow in 1951. He has been Writer in Residence at the universities of Edinburgh, Strathclyde and Glasgow. In 1995 he won the McVitie's Scottish Writer of the Year prize for for his book Something Very Like Murder. He received a Creative Scotland Award in 2003. Carcanet have published six books of his poetry: "A Bad Day for the Sung Dynasty" (Scottish Arts Council Book Award, 1984), "The Intelligent Observation of Naked Women" (1987), "Ridiculous! Absurd! Disgusting!" (1989), "Everything is Strange" (1994), "Second Best Moments in Chinese History" (1997) and "What? Again? Selected Poems" (2000).

Reviews

"Kuppner has one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary British poetry" – the London Review of Books declared

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