Playing with Fire

Lindop Grevel

Eavan Boland has praised Grevel Lindop's "lyric voice that handles images well, that distinguishes – as few poets do – the erotic from the sexual, that moves language in and out of metaphor with skill and grace".

The erotic and the sexual are richly represented in this new collection, whose subjects of celebration range from the lemons in Robert Graves' garden to a blood-drinking Tibetan deity. At its heart are a group of passionate love poems, and a sequence set in an East London strip club, treated with the imaginative insight and verbal skill that led R. V. Bailey, reviewing Lindop's "Selected Poems", to write that, "All the tricks in the poet's bag work for him as a master, so unobtrusively that it is only at the second or third reading that you become aware that the thought and feeling... are supported by an amazingly intricate web of sound". This new collection will enhance Lindop's reputation for originality as well as for mastery of poetic tradition.

As Kathleen Raine wrote, "Grevel Lindop celebrates a cosmic harmony that upholds the greatest and the least parts of the universe... His perspectives open on the stories within stories, where what is 'real' and what is illusory are woven together. Grevel Lindop does not see the world about him as in need of 'improving', for he sees all with the eye of love".

About the Author

Grevel Lindop was born in Liverpool and now lives in Manchester, where he was formerly a Professor of English at the Victoria University. His books include "A Literary Guide to the Lake District"; "The Opium Eater: A Life of Thomas De Quincey" and editions of Chatterton, De Quincey and Robert Graves's "The White Goddess". He has published six volumes of poems, including "Playing With Fire" (Carcanet, 2006) and "Luna Park" (2015).

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