Glasfryn Project

Folk Etymology contains most of the poems written by Anthony Mellors during the 2010s. It includes individual poems and sequences written for the most varied of circumstances, including a Yorkshire music festival and an improvised multi-media group performance. The poems shift effortlessly through a range of tonalities and concerns: there are poems for friends; poems bouncing off other artists and musicians; explorations of myth, culture, love and loneliness. Through it all the suspicion of a vulnerability towards the world, ripples into and out of the densely woven linguistic surfaces. This quality along with Mellors’ mischievous wit and the exuberantly virtuosic opulence of his phrase-mongering, make this a truly beguiling and sometimes genuinely touching collection.

This collection was put in order just before the poet’s death. 50% of all proceeds from booksales will go to Cancer Research.

“Folk Etymology carries forward Anthony Mellors’ astringent lyricism, ‘making one one with everything’. In this collection the poet enquires as to the positioning of lyric and lieder in the contemporary world, as a voice for the individual to make sense of landscapes, recordings, dialects and namings – to ‘fix my gaze on a far-thing,’ whilst harmonising the delight of terminology with mythology: ‘perforated bottoms / nozzles / clinker / dioxin cracking / fly ash / sludge.’ The poems uneasily teeter between the resonance of Schumann and dissonance of Aphex Twin, with Aristeas and Orpheus brought home to Norfolk and North Yorkshire for good measure: ‘poem / song / know / slowly Friday’. Steve Cropper, Leo Sayer and Rod McKuen are all present and correct.

This book sits proudly alongside the apparatus of Mellors’ parallel text, Winter Journey: enacting the reality of that book’s theory. The “how did that happen,” with the “did that really happen?” ‘The first thing you do going into a place / is look for a way out’ with all enfolded in the raptures of ‘I heard larks singing’.”

Simon Smith

“Anthony Mellors’ work in this book continues a life of interrupted aesthetics, a sustained process of aesthetic achievement with a deliberate testing of its practice. Sometimes the poetic proposals set out by the practice are deliberately undermined as the work proposes a necessary critique in an atmosphere of surprise and celebration. This book includes some succinct and two extended sequences demonstrating considerable differences at once with an appraisal of affinities. A book of necessity from an engaged poet.”

Allen Fisher

 

Published April 2023. Uk £11.00

Aquifer Books

ISBN: 978-1-7393462-0-1

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If you prefer to pay by cheque (sterling) please make the cheque payable to Aquifer Books and send to Glasfryn, Llangattock, Powys, NP8 1PH

 

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If you prefer to pay by cheque (sterling) please make the cheque payable to Aquifer Books and send to Glasfryn, Llangattock, Powys, NP8 1PH
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View all: Aquifer | Posted on 27 Apr 2023 |