Storm House
In 2006 Tim Liardet's brother died in mysterious circumstances. "The Storm House" is a book-length elegy that is both grief-fugue and exploration of family psychodrama. The two parts of the book form a powerful narrative of sorrow and anger, the events recollected in the first part extended by the virtuoso sonnet-sequence of the second. From uncertainty, trauma and silence, Liardet generates force and gravity in "the spring and leap / of energy" that is the creative life owed to the dead.
About the author
Tim Liardet has published seven full collections of poetry. His third collection "Competing with the Piano Tuner" was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation and longlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Prize in 1998 and his fourth – "To the God of Rain" – a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Spring 2003. He has reviewed poetry for such journals as the "Guardian", "Poetry Review" and "PN Review" and has been Poet-in-Residence at the "Guardian". "The Blood Chair", his fifth collection, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Summer 2006 and shortlisted for the 2006 T. S. Eliot Prize. He is Professor of Poetry at Bath Spa University.
Reviews
"It is rare for a book of poems to bring an original and deeply poetic talent to a human story as Tim Liardet does in this collection. There is horror in the story he tells, but Liardet takes the horror to its storm-lit root. The Storm House is a book of poems like no other. It is true poetry, sensationally assembled" – Peter Porter
"Tim Liardet makes the human macabre dazzle in the dark" – Gwyneth Lewis
"Tim Liardet makes the human macabre dazzle in the dark" – Gwyneth Lewis