Since the appearance of his first book, Arcadia (1979), Christopher Reid has become known for his restless spirit of enquiry and invention and imaginative approaches, as in Katerina Brac (1985),a book that purported to be translations of an unknown foreign poet. This selection draws on eight books of poems up to A Scattering, which was Costa Book of the Year, 2009.

Selected Poems

Literature & Fiction

Christopher Reid

History & Criticism

Faber and Faber

Christopher Reid's new collection is a quartet of works for voice, opening with the brisk and brightly coloured monologue of Professor Winterthorn - recently widowed, soon to be retired, who decides on impulse to attend a conference (on 'Nonsense and the Pursuit of Futility as strategies...') in California. He is a mordant observer, alert to the anomie of modern displacement - taxis, lifts, airports, lounges, hotel rooms - whose thin air seems at one with the loose change of widowhood, the having nowhere really to go. But adventure lies ahead, and sunshine, and Winterthorn is debonair if undeceived about the deceptions of grief. His strange ride ends on a note of recovery, with the world suddenly in focus again and brimming before him.

Nonsense

Poetry

Faber and Faber Ltd.

It follows the exploits of a group of hapless bards, more intimately connected than they themselves can possibly know, in their attempts to navigate the hazards of London literary society. Reid's colourful cast includes an ageing ex-offender, a lecherous academic, a fading grande dame and her underachieving best friend, and two young graduates, one as feckless as the other is ambitious. Hard as each may try, the poets' attempts at literary and social advancement are continually hampered both by fate and by a variety of personal shortcomings, ensuring that their story accelerates irrevocably towards comic catastrophe and collapse. Six Bad Poets is a delicious romp through a world that the author has observed closely over many years, and from which he reports with merciless accuracy, zest and humour.

Six Bad Poets

Lunch in Soho with a former lover, but Zanzotti's is under new management, and as the wine takes effect fond nostalgia gives way to something closer to the bone. A mock elegy for the heady joys of old-time Soho, 'The Song of Lunch' displays the full range of Reid's wit, craft and human sympathy.

The Song of Lunch

CB Editions

Stealing Books in Eighteenth-Century London

Richard Coulton

Matthew Mauger

Springer Nature

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Books by Christopher Reid