In Arcimboldos famous seventeenth-century Mannerist portraits, the sitters face is composed of organic matter. In subordinating a mixture of elements into an unrelated whole, imagination can transform the medium of expression itself. Tim Liardets Arcimboldos Bulldog: New and Selected Poems spans nine of his ten award-winning collections and adds new poems, fresh produce, reconfiguring his lifes work to date. The book draws on his two T. S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted collections The Blood Choir (2006) and The World Before Snow (2015). Vivid images, large abstractions, symbols, allegory, elegy, provocation, confession and lyric find a necessary place in his work. Arcimboldos Bulldog records achievement and includes a promissory note towards his next collection.
Twice shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot prize, Tim Liardet is the recipient of many literary awards and Arcimboldo's Bulldog: New and Selected Poems is his eleventh book of poems. Liardet was born in London, educated at the University of York, and worked variously and travelled widely before moving into higher education. He has reviewed contemporary poetry for an extensive number of journals and newspapers, including the Guardian, Poetry Review and PN Review, and his poetry has been translated into Farsi, Macedonian and German. He has judged many competitions, not least for the Poetry Society, run workshops for the Guardian, taught a wide diversity of specialist courses for the Arvon Foundation, for various festivals and institutions in the United States and, from 2016 to 2018, was a Poetry Book Society selector. He has performed his work on BBC Radio Three and BBC Radio Four and at many major festivals and venues, including the Ars Interpres Festival, Stockholm, the Internationales Literaturfestival Berlin, the Royal Festival Hall, Cambridge Public Library in Boston, the KGB bar and other locations in New York, plus a range of different venues in New Hampshire, Maine and Pennsylvania. He is Professor of Poetry at Bath Spa University.
First time Tim Liardet's ten books have been brought together. Liardet was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship, and has performed his work on BBC Radio Three and BBC Radio Four and read at many major festivals, including the Ars Interpres Festival, Stockholm, and the Internationales Literaturfestival Berlin. He is a well-known reviewer and has reviewed poetry for such journals as The Guardian, Poetry Review and PN Review and was recently appointed as Poetry Book Society Selector.
These intense long-lined verses freeze the chance encounter in cubist arrangements played out in echo chambers and halls of mirrors, as the lovers adjust to their new situation. The lyric line is stretched to accommodate their instability, as images become more fractured. This technique brilliantly succeeds in describing the aftermath of one meeting, each moment in the process of exploding. Liardet immerses us in an installation of momentous force.' - Pascale Petit (T. S. Eliot Prize Judge's Report, 2016); `Tim Liardet's poetry is a concentration of intelligence, fierce but accurate feeling and an encompassing imagination ... Arcimboldo's Bulldog is the work of an exemplary poet at the top of his craft.' - George Szirtes
