Enter, Fleeing

Enter, Fleeing is an enthralling new volume by one of the UK's most distinctive poets. The work gathered here displays Ford's power to amuse and startle, to move and disconcert. Some poems recreate moments from the poet's peripatetic childhood in Africa, America, Asia and the Gulf, while others dramatise anarchic or violent encounters with a range of shadowy antagonists. Enter, Fleeing is without doubt this highly original poet's most eloquent and compelling collection to date. ''Travelling by water / is best because you n-n-n-n-never / have to go uphill.' With such delightfully absurd logic, Mark Ford puts before us his unique poetic universe. In Ford's postmodern landscape of memory and desire, 'composed' as it is 'of insurgent, or of waning / Eros', our daily round of dream and disappointment is played out. The poet's luminous detail, his acute concern for formal control, and his near-perfect pitch make this a poetry that is, in the literal sense, charming. Reading Enter, Fleeing, I couldn't stop smiling.' Marjorie Perloff