Poetry, Fiction, or What? “The Long Take” by Robin Robertson

British author Robin Robertson has accomplished the highly unusual if not impossible: he’s written a poetry book that was shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize. That’s a prize given for novels.

Robertson’s The Long Take, or A Way to Lose More Slowly, didn’t win the prize (that went to Milkman by Anna Burns), but making the Man Booker short list is something of an achievement. And there’s more. The Long Takeis a poetry book, it’s a novel or something like a novel, and it unfolds like a noir movie. You’ve never read anything quite like this. 

Admittedly, I was attracted by the connection to the noir genre of fiction; in fact, from what I read about it and the Man Booker nomination, I thought it was a noir novel. Only when I started reading it did I realize I had a poetry book in my hands.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Poets and Poems: Robin Robertson’s “The Wrecking Light”

I discovered poet Robin Robertson at Blackwell’s Bookstore on Charing Cross Road in London.

It was near the end of a two-week vacation in London last September. We had met a British friend for lunch nearby, and afterward we were walking down Charing Cross toward Trafalgar Square. Blackwell’s was right there, and who am I to pass up an opportunity to step into a bookstore?

I wandered around the shop, until I found the section for poets and poems. It wasn’t what I’ve come to expect in many US book shops – it was large, and it was diverse, with volumes ranging from anthologies and collections by well-known poets to new poetry by people I’d never heard of.

I can’t explain why Robertson’s The Wrecking Light caught my eye. But it did.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.