Place in the World
Poems
"So he stood in his shoes
And he wondered,
He wondered,
He stood in his
Shoes and he wondered" – John Keats
Written under the sign of Eros, builder and destroyer of cities, and prefaced by an epigraph from Keats, the poems in "A Place in the World" are about home and antipodes, identity as a shibboleth and institutions as leviathans, Pacific islands and raised beaches, Edens and new Jerusalems, the critical spirit and the need for continuity. Cradling Scotland's stony myths in his palm, the poet sets off for Europe, an old civilisation that can barely reconcile itself to having become a colony of its own Utopia. In his pocket is a battered copy of the civil philosophy, also out of Scotland, that lends the book its punning title. Somewhere in the looming shadow of the cities is the poet, still looking – like the Greek philosopher – for human beings. "A Place in the World", Iain Bamforth's fourth collection, is his most lyrical, challenging and considered work to date.
About the Author
Iain Bamforth grew up in Glasgow and graduated from its medical school. He has pursued a peripatetic career as a hospital doctor, general practitioner, translator, lecturer in comparative literature, and latterly public health consultant in several developing countries, principally in Asia. His four books of poetry were joined by a fifth, "The Crossing Fee", in 2013.
His prose includes "The Body in the Library" (Verso, 2003), an account of modern medicine as told through literature; and "The Good European" (Carcanet, 2006), a collection of writings on ideas and literature in European history. He is currently working on a collection of aphoristic, fantastic and philosophical stories about medicine conjointly with a book of impressions of Wallacea – the biogeographical name for the various archipelagos between Asia and Australia. Several of his wide-ranging essays and reviews can be read on his website.
