Late Guest

Stephen Payne was born in Merthyr and lives in Penarth. He has published poems in magazines including The Poetry Review, The Rialto, The North, The Dark Horse, Magma, Poetry Wales and New Welsh Review. He was a Smiths Knoll mentee which led to the publication of his debut pamphlet, The Probabilities of Balance in 2010. His first full collection Pattern Beyond Chance was published by HappenStance in 2015 and shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year. It was followed by The Windmill Proof (2021) and a pamphlet The Wax Argument & Other Thought Experiments (2022). Stephen’s job until recently was Professor of Human-Centric Systems at the University of Bath where he is currently Professor Emeritus.

In this playful and deft collection, pickpockets, psychoanalysts, professors and philosophers run amok. There are exuberant dolphins, aggressive whales and unsolvable arguments. Boys mime causes of death at the swimming pool and a geyser erupts sporadically but a trip to the Repair Café should see you right. Future wives and other interesting encounters may be found in the kitchen of a party, if only you could arrive on time.'Deftly teetering from small occasion to whimsical association, with a glance at some lightly-worn knowledge, some close-to-the-bone apprehension, on the way, the apparently casual voice of these prose poems knows exactly what it’s doing. Think of the skill of the tightrope-walker, always almost falling in a way that makes us smile… and gasp now and then. Yes, like that.’ – Philip Gross‘The Late Guest is a box of delights, every page its own miniature world, taking the reader somewhere unexpected, to places we thought we knew and others we can only travel to through these exquisite prose poems. Payne is master of the sleight of hand, these encounters changing course and tracking new paths without the reader realising, until we look around and say, ah! This is the heart of the matter, the truth of the thing. These poems inhabit both the fantastical and the everyday, and the unexpected points where these overlap. Endlessly curious, inventive and startling – a book that moved me and made me laugh in equal measure, often in the same tender moment.’ – Katherine Stansfield