19th April 6.30 p.m. till 8.30 p.m.

Launch of Chris Emery’s third collection of poetry, The Departure, at The Book Hive, 53 London Street, Norwich, NR2 1HL

SOPHIE COLLINS grew up in Holland and moved to London in 2007 to study Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College. Her poems have appeared in Mercy, Rising and Clinic II. She currently lives in Norwich and is studying towards an MA in poetry at the UEA.

PETER DANIELS at last publishes his first full collection Counting Eggs in April 2012 with Mulfran Press. His pamphlets include Mr Luczinski Makes a Move with HappenStance (2011) and three with Smith Doorstop, twice as a Poetry Business competition winner; he has also won the Ledbury (2002), Arvon (2008) and TLS (2010) poetry competitions. His translations of Vladislav Khodasevich from Russian are due from Angel Books in 2013. www.peterdaniels.org.uk

Praise for Peter Daniels

‘His eye for the absurdity of every-day life is sharp but gentle, his tone light but authoritative. Daniels never preaches or pontificates, but, in their indirect and humorous way, his poems seek answers to the bigger questions about how we should live.’ —Carol Rumens

‘The poems have a subtle flavour all of their own, a sense of “brave new world”, as well as of “fin de siècle”. They’re myth-making, risqué, unforcedly stylish and with a delicate spiritual sense.’ —Moniza Alvi

‘Peter Daniels writes poems that shift perspectives, sometimes so deftly that you scarcely spot it being done – that is, until you notice that city landscapes have come alive with unsettling details round the edges; the everyday is subject to small seismic jolts of time and scale.’ —Philip Gross

CHRIS EMERY lives in Cromer with his wife and children. He works in publishing. His has written two previous collections of poetry, a writer’s guide and edited editions of Emily Brontë, John Keats and Christina Rossetti. His work has been widely published in magazines and anthologised, most recently in Identity Parade: New British and Irish Poets (Bloodaxe, 2010). He is a contributor to The Cambridge Companion to Creative Writing (Cambridge University Press, 2012), edited by David Morley and Philip Neilsen.

Praise for Chris Emery

‘The poems in The Departure possess (and are possessed by) such intent, detailed, living brilliance, it is like reading a series of captivating novels compressed to their musical essence.’ —David Morley

‘In his aptly-named new collection, Chris Emery shows he still has the talent to surprise us with a perfectly-managed change of direction and range, showing (in the words of one of his poems) a new ‘fantastic ordinary face’. A fresh accessibility is achieved with a richness of striking and imaginative language that will impress his existing readership, and reward the new one this book is certain to attract. There is plenty of humour here alongside genuine political commitment, a lot of real human feeling between its sharp satirical edges, kissing as well as broken teeth. Anybody interested in the contemporary poetry of these islands will have to read this book.’
—Ian Duhig

‘Chris Emery’s poems are like highly compressed short stories that we enter at high speed. Once in, the place is full of vivid detail keeping our head turning. A good deal of the world is there  with all its proper names, staring back at us as if it desired calm but knew things were on the move. Sometimes surreal, sometimes baroque, at other times darkly playful, the world is as in “Snails”: “Tonight we will pile them, pile everything of them?/?into the whorl of a bucket and then we will fill it?/?to the top with forest tears and let the silence do its work.”’
—George Szirtes

‘There’s an immediacy and something familiar in the way the poems of Chris Emery’s new collection address the reader. They impel us to engage, to join the moment, the experience, the thought, and to consider what’s being prised open or experienced. The ease with which he develops irony and yet is freshly lyrical is almost reassuring. This is a very sophisticated and controlled poetry, language rich, but also surprising and at times gloriously tangential. What matters most is that it urges us to confide, to share – written because it has to come out, but also because we might like to listen. Emotions work with sensations and retain the intelligence that has so characterised Emery’s earlier writing. Who are we, where am I, how do we all relate to a wider world with its still and frantic moments? This book expands horizons, acerbic and poignant, constrained and ecstatic at once.’
—John Kinsella

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