Product Description

A collection of poems displaying the details of contemporary life. Love scenes are laced with irony, irrelevant vampires live out their days on the sea front at Eastbourne and flowers have "fine pointed petals like scapels".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #282185 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 51 pages

Review
John Stammers, described on the back of this book as 'reminiscent of an English Frank O'Hara', pays homage to the master with his poem The Call, but there is much more to Stammers than a rehashing of American 20th-century poetry. In this, his first collection, he offers a range of work covering such themes as psychoanalysis, the cinema and the sea. These poems are both accessible and demanding; in many, such as The Clinic, Stammers offers a glimpse of a familiar world but leaves his readers to supply a context. His love poems in particular depend on familiar details from late 20th-century culture, 'her dark denim skirt' in Spine, 'postmodern Ninotchka' in Breakages. Impression is exceptionally moving and surprising: the poet watches a woman he is out on a date with scraping faeces from her shoe and thinks how beautiful she looks; Stammers rarely resorts to cliche or 'poetic' language. For a relatively new poet, his style is already distinctive, combining economic use of visual, almost cinematic imagery and clever wordplay. However, he is prepared to try different forms, such as the repeated words at the end of lines in Where is the Rest of my Horse? and clever rhymes in The Party. Stammers writes effectively about places and place names have a particular magic for him, whether it be his great-grandfather's grave at Gestingthorpe, a journey beyond Dublin in Testimony, or Vienna in There Are Some Places Beyond. Black humour pervades his work. He describes the last vampire who now lives in Eastbourne and Lana, who can tell a person's character from the length of their middle toe. So What Do You Do on Your Week Off? combines Stammers's humour with the glamour of the movies as he imagines a holiday from reality. An engaging and demanding collection. (Kirkus UK)

The Times
'A livewire imagination'

Independent on Sunday
'The newly-crowned king of neo-pop cool'

Customer Reviews

Most astonishing book of poems. Moving, brilliant and deep.
The poems in "Panoramic Lounge-bar" are astonishing. They are contemporary and playful, whilst being directly concerned with "viccissitudes of the heart" (The Call). In this unusual book, romance is blended with art, music and knowing wit to produce an effect one would only have thought possible in cinema. Indeed, he has produced a kind of cinema of the imagination. I found myself reading and re-reading them and in the end wishing for more.

Love might die, but poetry doesn't.
Thoughtful and thought-provoking collection, revealing previously hidden depths about a person I once knew - or perhaps never really did. Beautifully written, scattered with subtle and amusing references to classical and other works. I take issue with one of August Kleinzahler's remarks on the back cover, however. Maybe if John had ever been prepared to "negotiate a roundabout at 60 miles an hour", we would still be married. A wonderful book though and a pleasure to read. Congratulations John on an extraordinary achievement. Few true poets manage to get themselves in print with such a prestigious publisher these days, and even fewer poets who do so emerge from the publishing process as readable as you have.