"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 Ian 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 greed. Elsewhere Duhig's many admirers will be delighted by his new ballads and elegies, his erudite high jinks, and his low gagswith which he builds on the new imaginative territory he...
"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...
If the starting point for a number of poems in Ian Duhig's richly varied new collection is Sterne's "Tristram Shandy," its presiding genius is the great 18th-century civil engineer, fiddler, and polymath Blind Jack Metcalf whose life Duhig here celebrates, and from whose example he draws great inspiration. Writing with an almost Burnsian eclecticism, Duhig explores urban poverty, determinism, social justice, and the consolations of poetry and music on a journey that takes in everything from a riotous reimagining of Don Juan to the tragedy of Manuel Bravo (the Leeds asylum seeker from Angola...
If the starting point for a number of poems in Ian Duhig's richly varied new collection is Sterne's "Tristram Shandy," its presiding genius is the gre...