Todd Swift Bücher

The sequel delves into the complexities of human experience over the past year, reflecting on themes such as identity, mortality, and connection. It explores the interplay of the scientific and the mysterious, touching on love, relationships, and the impact of the environment. The collection captures the essence of daily life and the emotions tied to various aspects like art, nature, and personal relationships, all while contemplating what endures in a changing world.

Poetry. SPRING IN NAME ONLY is Todd Swift's first full collection since his 2014 American Selected and marks the first with Black Spring Press. Responding to the age of Brexit and Covid-19, these are lyric modern poems that take their bearings from both Auden and Empson, F.T. Prince and Dylan Thomas-as such, they seek to explore the '40s style of heightened rhetoric, emotion and personal myth Swift has elsewhere celebrated, as in his edition of the Collected Tiller. Fusing irony and sincerity, confession and oratory, they build a bridge of eloquence, with which to address the key themes of Swift's now-36-year career as a published poet of international stature: fear of death, anxiety in life, faith, despair, love, desire, empathy and critique. No other contemporary poet is as willing to push language to the pitch of perverse stylishness, in the services of poetic majesty. Here springs a restorative fluency that raises the bar.

Christmas 2021, Todd Swift was in ICU, close to death. His heart had failed. A selection of new and older poems, published as a fundraiser for Todd, who cannot currently work, or indeed, face anything much more stressful than an episode of Gardener's Question Time...

In OPTICIAN TO THE STARS, the British-Canadian Todd Swift, one of the leading poet-editors of his generation, takes a look at life with and without rose-tinted specs, considering the sublunar world in all its beauty and horror. The collection favours briefer, more epigrammatic poems, often composed on his iPhone while waiting for blood tests or unable to sleep. For the past two years have seen Swift survive a blood clot on his heart, and a life-changing diagnosis. Not a diary of disease and recovery, and never seeking easy epiphanies, the poems nevertheless unfold a tapestry of humane, witty, and often formally-delightful perceptions. From remembering poets who have died, to celebrating seeing a movie star from Mad Max: Fury Road cycling past, these are poems always seeking to see things, and say things, with craft, skill, elegance, and joy.

Poets appearing in the anthology are: Alan Dunnett, Alex Bell, Alex Houen, Ali Lewis, Amy McCauley, Andrew Fentham, Annabel Banks, Becky Cherriman, Ben Ashwell, Cato Pedder, Claire Quigley, Clarissa Aykroyd, Colin Dardis, Daisy Behagg, David Spittle, Debris Stevenson, Edward Doegar, Elizabeth Parker, Erica McAlpine, Erin Fornoff, Françoise Harvey, Holly Corfield-Carr, Ian M. Dudley, Isabel Rogers, James Nixon, Jason Eng Hun Lee, Jen Calleja, Jessica Mayhew, Karl O'Hanlon, Katherine Shirley, Liz Quirke, Lorna Collins, Maria Isakova-Bennett, Matt Howard, Matthew Paul, Matthew Stewart, Michael Naghten Shanks, Niall Bourke, Pierre Ringwald, Richard Scott, Rishi Dastidar, Roisin Kelly, Samantha Walton, Samuel Tongue, Stewart Carswell, Tess Jolly, Tiffany Anne Tondut, VA Sola Smith, Victoria Kennefick, Wes Lee.

The fifty poets included are: Paul Asta, Charlie Baylis, Daniel Bennett, Niall Bourke, Alan Buckley, Jo Burns, Jenna Clake, Simon Collings, Elaine Cosgrove, Anne Cousins, Harriet Creelman, Thomas Crompton, Emma Danes, Susannah Dickey, Edward Doegar, Charlotte Eichler, Ken Evans, Adele Fraser, Andrew F. Giles, Maeve Henry, Robin Houghton, Antony Huen, Majella Kelly, Anna Kisby, Joe Lines, John McGhee, Simon Middleton, Jessica Mookherjee, Daniella Moritz, Emma Must, Paul Nash, Jack Nicholls, Richard O’Brien, Elizabeth O’Connell-Thompson, Geraldine O’Kane, Matthew Paul, James Peake, Rachel Piercey, Lauren Pope, Jody Porter, Samuel Prince, Matthew Rice, Samantha Roden, Sarah Sibley, Luke Smith, Jayne Stanton, James Trevelyan, Deborah Turnbull, Carolyn Waudby, and Kate Wise.