Black Spring Press
Spring In Name Only
Spring In Name Only
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Available NOW! | Poetry - Paperback
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.
All sales profits go to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
''Swift’s poetry is so evidently intellectual, witty, urbane and ludic that you think you know where you are, and then comes the night – some image of such chronic unease, you’re unsettled entirely.'' – Bridget Hourican
''A voice for our time'' – Derek Mahon
Stanley Todd Swift
born in Montreal, Canada, in 1966, was named after his British granddad, Stanley Swift, and Todd, the character from the TV show Route 66. He was a 2017-2018 Visiting Scholar at Pembroke College, Cambridge, as the Writer-in-residence. He has had over twenty collections of his own poetry published, by presses in Canada, the US, Ireland, and the UK. Mentored by A. Alvarez in London, he considers himself a confessional poet. He has a PhD in creative and critical writing from the UEA, where his supervisors included George Szirtes, Denise Riley and Jon Cook.
He is a book collector, lover of cats, and keen swimmer. He has many wonderful nieces and nephews, and one godson, the beautiful lad Alex. He has written over 100 hours of television, including for Paramount, the CBC, Fox, CINAR, Disney, and HBO - and was the series editor for anime cult classic Sailor Moon.
"Todd Swift is the Orson Welles of contemporary poetry" - Professor Mark Ford