Poetry News

The Guardian Reviews Christopher Reid’s Nonsense

By Harriet Staff

The Guardian says Christopher Reid’s latest book, Nonsense, is “like being inside a theatre – a wonderful, oddball auditorium with a cast composed largely of Reid lookalikes.” The author praises the first poem in the collection, “Professor Winterthorn’s Journey”:

‘Professor Winterthorn’s Journey’ starts this collection, takes up half of it and is by far the best thing in it. To be disguised as another person brings with it freedoms – including the right to depart from any predictable script. Winterthorn is a blundering widower, an indecisive packer, a practised yet somehow abject traveller. He is on his way to a literary conference, to which he seems to have invited himself, on the subject of futility. What Reid excels at is deliberately not editing out tedious parts of travel – or of life – but lending his keen wit to what most of us pretend not to see or to what we tell ourselves is not happening.

The reviewer is less impressed by the poems that follow, calling them “inconsequential.” Find the full review here.

Tags: Christopher Reid
Posted in Poetry News on Tuesday, September 18th, 2012 by Harriet Staff.