Emporium
"Emporium", Ian Pindar's first collection, is stocked with curiosities, jokes and horrors. Step through the door and discover Big Bumperton on his bicycle, Mrs Beltinska in her bath, Monsieur P. on holiday, a transfixed girl in blue jeans, a wasp, two lascivious figs and a god who wanders shopping arcades "enhaloed in black flames of longing and dread". A chain letter travels across centuries of poetry, from Langland to Maxine Chernoff; deep in a snowy forest, seen only by wolves, a mysterious machine is resonating – Pindar maps a surreal hinterland where the dark humour of absurdity lies in wait.
About the author
Ian Pindar was born in London in 1970. He published his first work, a life of James Joyce, in 2004. "Emporium", his debut poetry collection, appeared in 2011. "Constellations" is his second collection. His poems have appeared in "The English Review", "The Forward Book of Poetry 2011 and 2012", "London Magazine", "Magma", "New Poetries III", "Oxford Poetry", "PN Review", "Poetry Review", "Stand", the "Times Literary Supplement and Wave Composition". Pindar won second prize in the National Poetry Competition 2009, a supplementary prize in the Bridport Prize 2010 and was shortlisted for the 2010 Forward Prize (Best Single Poem). He lives in Oxfordshire.
Reviews
"Pindar's writing gestures towards a public language... though this is regularly undermined by the comic and sardonic... The poetry thrives on this flexibility of tone, its declarations constantly being shifted, contested and contradicted... Much of the book is made up of elusive, uneasy parables... that hover between pessimism and hope, and the potential of language to articulate this predicament" – the Guardian
"It was about time for somebody to be channelling Eliot, maybe Stevens, Laforgue, and the Metaphysicals to such clashing effect: 'bright as a seedsman's packet', with unexpected timbres and sonorities sabotaged by glockenspiel accents. Pindar is just right for the job" – John Ashbery
"In this sparkling debut collection Ian Pindar brilliantly fulfils Verlaine's injunction to the poet to take eloquence and wring its neck. Emporium offers the reader a beguiling and compendious range of styles and voices, and signals the arrival of a fascinating and original poet" – Mark Ford
"It was about time for somebody to be channelling Eliot, maybe Stevens, Laforgue, and the Metaphysicals to such clashing effect: 'bright as a seedsman's packet', with unexpected timbres and sonorities sabotaged by glockenspiel accents. Pindar is just right for the job" – John Ashbery
"In this sparkling debut collection Ian Pindar brilliantly fulfils Verlaine's injunction to the poet to take eloquence and wring its neck. Emporium offers the reader a beguiling and compendious range of styles and voices, and signals the arrival of a fascinating and original poet" – Mark Ford