Book description
In 2006 Tim Liardet's brother died in mysterious circumstances. The
Storm House is a book-length elegy that is both grief-fugue and
exploration of family psychodrama. The two parts of the book form a
powerful narrative of sorrow and anger, the events recollected in the
first part extended by the virtuoso sonnet-sequence of the second.
From uncertainty, trauma and silence, Liardet generates force and
gravity in the spring and leap / of energy' that is the creative life
owed to the dead.
'It is rare for a book of poems to bring an original and deeply
poetic talent to a human story as Tim Liardet does in this collection.
There is horror in the story he tells, but Liardet takes the horror to
its storm-lit root. The Storm House is a book of poems like no other. It
is true poetry, sensationally assembled.' - Peter Porter 'Tim Liardet
makes the human macabre dazzle in the dark.' - Gwyneth Lewis Tim
Liardet has published seven full collections of poetry. His third
collection Competing with the Piano Tuner was a Poetry Book Society
Special Commendation and longlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Prize in
1998 and his fourth - To the God of Rain - a Poetry Book Society
Recommendation for Spring 2003. He has reviewed poetry for such journals
as the Guardian, Poetry Review and PN Review and has been
Poet-in-Residence at the Guardian. The Blood Chair, his fifth
collection, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Summer 2006 and
shortlisted for the 2006 T. S. Eliot Prize. He is Professor of Poetry at
Bath Spa University.
