Peter Philpott - Böcker

"Are We Not Drawn..." takes off from a palindrome quoted in Anne Michael's novel, "Fugitive Pieces": 'Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?' Drawn onward; but trapped in repetition and mirroring. The mirrors are now fractured: each line breaks under the strain, as voices and images pour in. Verbal repetitions, starting with the words of the palindrome, give some sorts of paths through, continually evolving and shifting. It is a work of naive realism, then, capable of recording how gardenias, Inca mummies and the iron mines of West Somerset determine our days. Just listen to what you are being told...

"Haunted by a phrase of Keston Sutherland's, 'The pressure to think and sing', Peter Philpott's lyrics on his granddaughter Ianthe read like the meditations of a slightly deranged but liberated Wordsworth, who has escaped onto the streets of the twenty-first century, not quite sure whether he is the grandfather or the grandchild. Full of grace and wonder, and a grasp of complex forms which have been chewed carefully before being spat out again, this is poetry of the highest order, proving without question that there are no ideas but in sings." -Philip Terry