Book description
Ian Duhig's
The Speed of Dark
is structured around his astonishing reworking of the text of Le Roman
de Fauvel, a medieval text that railed against the corruption of the
12th-century French court and church. In Duhig's hands, however, the
tale of the power-mad horse-king Fauvel gains a terrifying and almost
prophetic contemporary relevance, and is identified with more recent
crusades, crazed ambitions and insatiable greeds. Elsewhere Duhig's many
admirers will be delighted by his new ballads and elegies, his erudite
high jinks and his low gags - with which he builds on the new
imaginative territory he staked out in The Lammas Hireling to such
universal acclaim. The Speed of Dark
again shows Duhig as one the most capacious and brilliant minds in
contemporary poetry.
'The most original poet of his generation' Carol Ann Duffy, Guardian
'His poetry is learned, rude, elegant, sly and funny, mixing gilded
images, belly-laughs and esoteric lore about language (including Irish),
art, history, politics and children's word-games' Ruth Padel,
Independent on Sunday
'Duhig telescopes topical allusions, scholarly references and coarse
humour into tightly-shaped, surreal poems which burst open with
explosive moral force' Alan Brownjohn, Sunday Times
Ian Duhig is one of the Poetry Book Society's 'New Generation' poets.
He has won both the Northern and the National Poetry Competitions, and
held Creative Writing fellowships at Leeds and Lancaster Universities.
He currently lives in Leeds.
