A Little Bit of Bread and No Cheese

Jeremy Over's poetry creates a world of delight and amazement; in the face of language, love and an elusive reality which seems eternally beyond the realm of rational control. His cornucopia spills out pineapples, watermelons, unstitched shoes and flocks of birds from the baked remains of the waterlogged family bible. He dares to glance down from vertiginous perspectives and the laughter his poems produce is bright and innocent. There is nothing reductive in his ironies. He draws on Neruda, Stevens, Traki and more, but readers will feel in his work the pressure of the Lorca of Poeta en Nueva York and the tonalities of Laforgue.The poems rarely break entirely from a narrative core, yet they challenge the current orthodoxy of poetry as storytelling on every level. His is an important new voice and this is a glittering first collection.