Frank Freeman's Dancing School

These poems are preoccupied with stories, the nature of memory, and identity. Many are love poems. From Kidderminster to Paris via Swansea and the Antarctic, taking in a Viennese cafe and the mysterious Planet X, the work comes close to the edge but remains sure-footed. Things aren't what they seem: background becomes foreground, the periphery and the hidden snap into focus, and 'the photographs on the mantelpiece pull themselves together'. If these poems were an accident, they'd be a train crash: survivors would come round in a different country, dust off their clothes, barely recognise themselves or each other. The poems are in charge of the remote and make full use of it: a Sunday afternoon in suburbia cuts to a journal of polar exploration. Events unfold simultaneously, casting strange lights on each other. Parallel worlds - time travel - or the way in which memories stand beside experience, nudging and colouring it, transforming it into something new and extraordinary. Janet Fisher describes the work as 'a sort of martial art: it stands there looking slight and friendly but in reality it's using the reader's own strength against herself till she ends up flat on the mat not knowing what's hit her. 'These poems draw you in, again and again. It is compelling, tender and provocative; acutely observed and seriously funny.

ISBN 1844715035   Pages 80 ISBN13 9781844715039 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 120 Publisher Salt Publishing   Published in Cambridge Imprint Salt Publishing   Series title Salt Modern Poets S. Format Paperback   Height (mm) 216 Publication date 15 Jul 2009   Width (mm) 140 DEWEY 821.914   Spine width (mm) 6 DEWEY edition DC22   Academic level General

Emergency Rations Lighthouse Locked In Thank You for the Postcard I Read It Emergency Rations are Tasting Better and Better Fishing He Squeezes Tennis Balls to Strengthen his Hands On the Third Day Leaves are Just Thin Wood Summers The Morning they Set Off it was Snowing Daglingworth Blues There are Mountains but I Can't See Them Cross Country Day Breaks as a Petrol Station L'Hermitage and a Bird Hotel de l'Angleterre Shoes Would You Listen to the Safety Instructions Please At the Smell of the Old Dog Proportion Apple Trees in a Gale Baldwin Road Frank Freeman's Dancing School New White Bike Hair Yes Fun Borneo Your Limbs Bound and Mouth Full of Cloth In the Mountains of Truth You Will Never Climb in Vain Picking Up Speed Kidderminster-on-Sea Climbing the Tree to Pick Fruit he Fell and Lost Wake Up The Ruler of Planet X Return When She Got Back After Her Funeral Gower Road Mid-Gallop 10 Easy Pieces for Piano Vienna Guitarist Iowa On Police Records Rock Cross Noise Fireside Bookshop Knowledge of this Sort Helps Keep Society Together Still Alive Satsang with Paul The Muleteer in the Orange Shirt Shape Chinese New Year The Poem Spade Bucket Apple On the Street in Bratislava Boggle Hole Mirror Fever The Science of Predictive Astrology Fall I Am a Crab Oxygen Tent Bike Ride Snow Chez Marianne

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