Thirty-some years in journalism have left little obvious trace in Aidan Semmens's poetry-though, like the sports headlines he writes for the News of the World, his verse is grounded in word-play and natural speech rhythms. In his first full-length collection he engages death, complexity, and the Authorised Version, which provides several of his titles. Other sources for his language include news magazines, war diaries, popular science and psychology texts, overheard phrases and the 2001 Aldeburgh Festival programme. This is a poetry of ideas and allusions, where, as in music or dream, any...
Thirty-some years in journalism have left little obvious trace in Aidan Semmens's poetry-though, like the sports headlines he writes for the News of t...
Aidan Semmens’s fifth collection of poems moves from the range of the world to the deeply personal, always placing the detail in historical context. Employing a variety of poetic techniques, he moves from the moral ambiguities of empire to the run-in to Brexit; from a reworking, forty years on, of the poem for which he was awarded the Cambridge University Chancellor’s Medal, to the breakdown of language suffered by his mother after an ultimately fatal stroke. “There’s an exuberance of the poet in full stride. Typically, the phrasing and imagery are seductive and of the physical world...
Aidan Semmens’s fifth collection of poems moves from the range of the world to the deeply personal, always placing the detail in historical context....
